Opinion » peoplesworld

Trump's assassination talk sends Republicans running; creates opening for progressives

C.J. Atkins — Wed, 10 Aug 2016 12:38:00 +0000

As the familiar refrain now goes, the Donald Trump campaign has had a "tough two weeks." From the controversy with Gold Star parents to the Paul Ryan endorsement commotion and the Iranian cash airplane video, more and more Republicans have started to join a growing chorus questioning whether their nominee has what it takes to be president.

Trump's economic speech in Detroit Monday was supposed to be the turnaround. Read straight from the teleprompter, it was a perfect fit with the traditional GOP program of the last few decades: tax cuts tilted toward the upper end of the wealth spectrum and deregulation. But of course, it's not a Trump speech without a few disingenuous jabs against free trade thrown in for good measure. The word "workers" was sprinkled in here and there. Some took it as a sign that perhaps the Donald had turned the corner. Maybe this guy could actually be kept on point.

But then, less than 24 hours later, it all fell apart. At a rally in North Carolina, the Republican nominee said that if Hillary Clinton is elected president, it may fall to "the Second Amendment people" to stop her from appointing Supreme Court justices. His remarks, which plunged his campaign into a fresh crisis, were seen by many as musings about assassination or an armed rebellion.

Though his campaign immediately went into damage control and tried to explain it away as simply a call for gun-owner unity at the polls, the likely result is that the already steady stream of Republicans abandoning Trump will now turn into a deluge. Many long-time GOP leaders are starting to see that Trump may be a sinking ship beyond repair.

GOP: A party already divided

The important thing to understand from the start is that Trump was never the guy that the GOP wanted. By cravenly using the racism and reactionary politics stirred up by Tea Party resentment over the years, they did, however, create the conditions which gave rise to his right-wing populist campaign. As long as that kind of message was winning elections and their candidates came out on top, the party didn't mind giving a wink and a nod to the birther movement, indulging in anti-immigrant policies, or opportunistically using the Evangelical community. But with Trump, they finally lost control of the tiger they had been riding.

The recent splits that appearing in the Republican Party - such as 50 GOP national security officials denouncing their nominee, Maine Senator Susan Collins refusing to vote for him, or Joe Scarborough calling on the party to "dump Trump" - are all public manifestations of a trend that was already evident under the surface even during the primaries.

Campaign contribution data from the Center for Responsive Politics shows that candidates like Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz, and Marco Rubio were far and away the preferred standard-bearers of the big money industrial sectors that back the Republican Party, especially oil and gas, real estate, insurance, tobacco, agribusiness, construction, and transportation. For all of these groups, Trump was far down on their recipient list.

Since he achieved victory in the primaries, though, there has been a period of wait-and-see for many Republicans and their corporate backers. It was still hoped that perhaps Trump's right-wing populism could be controlled and channeled. Maybe the worst could be avoided.

The panic that now appears to be sending GOPers running for the lifeboats, however, is a signal that such hopes are fading fast. Trump has proven that he just can't be relied upon to stick to the script they've tried to write for him. Electoral self-interest is now forcing a reconsideration.

To be fair of course, you also cannot discount the common sense and decency angle in some of this. Trump's reckless rhetoric goes far beyond even the right-wing norm of Republican politics. The further he ventures out on the extremist limb, the more that some Republicans - especially Republican voters - are going to be questioning their conscience.

Clinton and the Democrats should seize the populist agenda

But none of this means the Clinton campaign can count on smooth sailing ahead or that progressives can just wait for the votes to come rolling in. Even if Trump flames out, his populist base in the industrial and rural heartland is still going to be angry and desperate. Their concerns about the the crushing realities of an economic "recovery" which has yet to come their way, the unresponsiveness of the political system, and the fact that "Washington elites" continue to ignore them are not going to go away.

The self-inflicted crippling of Trump's campaign presents both dangers and opportunities for the left and labor.

It means it is time to pay even more attention to down-ticket races for Congress and state offices. As its chances at the presidency become more untenable, the Republican Party is going to focus more of its efforts and resources to hold onto Congress. If the cash of the Koch brothers and others is not flowing to Trump, you can bet that it will be pouring into right-wing campaigns at all other levels even more.

That's the danger part.

The potential opportunity part comes from the fact that Trump is going to be under increased pressure to stick to the teleprompter. GOP leaders will keep trying (perhaps in vain) to tape their traditional policy book over Trump's mouth in an effort at damage control. This could leave an opening for progressives to open discussions with some of the working class Trump voters who feel their troubadour is abandoning them for the establishment.

If Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party are smart, they will seize the populist agenda. Right now they should be putting forward even stronger proposals for expanding Social Security, moving toward single-payer healthcare, and implementing stronger family leave and other policies. Rooting the campaign in strong left populist measures such as these is the best route to not only ensuring a landslide victory in November but also expanding the democratic coalition to include even more of those left out by globalization and the uneven economic recovery. It can help shift the balance in Congress and set the stage for real advances for the majority of the American people after the elections.

This is the opportunity to speak to the real concerns of those who feel abandoned and forgotten. It is the chance to speak to the concerns of the 99 percent with a message that works. This opening should not be squandered by turning to the right or simply gloating while Trump self-immolates.

Photo: Donald Trump campaign signs are swept up with the garbage after a cancelled event at the University of Illinois-Chicago on Friday, March 11, 2016. | Charles Rex Arbogast / AP

Desperation in Chicago and other cities while Trump talks estate tax

Jesse Jackson — Tue, 09 Aug 2016 12:49:00 +0000

Chicago is one of America's greatest cities. Yet many of its residents live in terror in what is virtually a war zone. When a demented killer slew 49 in a gun rampage in Orlando, there was national attention. Presidential candidates called for escalating the fight against the Islamic State in the Middle East, even though the killer seems to have been a homegrown terrorist.

But in Chicago, 404 have died in gun violence this year. According to the Congressional Research Service, the murder rate averaged 16.0 per 100,000 a year from 2010-2014. That is nearly four times the national average of 4.6 per 100,000 and nearly three times the Illinois state average (5.8).

These killings are not randomly distributed. African Americans constitute about one-third of Chicago's residents, but they account for 80 percent of its murder victims.

The killings are concentrated in endangered communities, communities burdened with abject poverty and deplorable conditions. Desperation and murder are segregated in Chicago.

In West Garfield Park, the average per capita income is $10,951. More than 40 percent of the residents live below the poverty line, with an unemployment rate greater than 25 percent.

In Englewood, the average per capita household income is $11,993. Forty-two percent of households live below the poverty line, with an unemployment rate over 21 percent.

In Fuller Park, per capita household income is $9,016, with a majority - 55.5 percent - of households living below the poverty line. The unemployment rate is 40 percent. Washington Park, North Lawndale, Austin, Greater Grand Crossing, East Garfield Park...the list goes on.

During the height of the Great Depression, the unemployment rate hovered at roughly 20 percent. These neighborhoods are suffering levels twice that now, six years into the supposed recovery.

These are disaster zones in a supposedly world-class city. They look like they are under siege, and to some extent they are. Drugs, guns, violence, and despair mark lives condemned to live in these zones.

The war in Iraq - the one the Bush administration chose to launch - will end up costing us more than $3 trillion. And of course, the wars go on - in Afghanistan, in Syria, in Iraq, in Yemen, and now the U.S. is beginning to bomb Libya.

But the right now disaster zones in Chicago are ignored. The everyday violence is decried but nothing is done. The poverty is regretted but there is no plan to attack it.

In fact, national policy does more to expand the divide between endangered communities and affluent ones, between those living in the disaster zone and those living uptown.

A new report by the Institute for Policy Studies and the Center for Enterprise Development details the growing racial wealth gap in America. They find that without a drastic change in policy, by 2043, when people of color are projected to account for more than half of the U.S. population, the racial wealth divide between white households and African American and Latino households will have doubled from about $500,000 in 2013 to more than $1 million.

The gap reflects the impact of historic inequities - from federally-sanctioned housing discrimination to private redlining - but its expansion is fueled in part by tax policies that aid the highest earners while providing the lowest income families with virtually nothing.

Over the past 20 years alone, the report finds, the federal government spent more than $8 trillion through tax programs to assist families in building long-term wealth, including saving for retirement, purchasing a home, starting a business or paying for college. But the impact of these expenditures has been "upside down." With typical millionaires pocketing about $145,000 in public tax benefits each year to increase their wealth while working families receive a total of $174 on average.

More of the same won't help. Adding benefits to the wealthy few - like Donald Trump's call to end the estate tax - will add to the inequity and contribute to the despair. If nothing changes, the desperate zones will get worse. Surely this crisis is worthy of debate in the presidential campaign, and action from the White House and Congress.

Rev. Jesse Jackson is the founder and president of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition. He was a leader in the civil rights movement alongside Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and was twice a candidate for President of the United States.

This article originally appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times. It is reprinted here with the permission of Rainbow PUSH.

Photo: In this May 30, 2016, photo, police work the scene where a man was fatally shot in the chest in Chicago's Washington Park neighborhood. | E. Jason Wambsgans/AP

From #FeelTheBern to #ImWithHer: A young activist takes the long view

Jim Roberts — Tue, 09 Aug 2016 10:30:00 +0000

As of the start of August, it should be clear to voters that either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton will be the 45^th President of the United States. As a former supporter of Bernie Sanders' campaign, this fact has proved difficult to digest.

No doubt, Bernie Sanders served as the best representative for the movement towards a more just and democratic society. In spite of that, following Senator Sanders' failure to secure the Democratic nomination, I have come to the conclusion that the most effective means of furthering the movement he represented is to ensure Hillary Clinton thoroughly defeats Donald Trump by a landslide in the upcoming general election.

By no means has the movement with Bernie at its head dissipated or been co-opted; far from it. Politics, much like physics, demonstrates the conservation of momentum. Many of my fellow leftists and ex-Bernie supporters fear that backing Clinton will result in a neoliberal usurpation and expenditure of the progressive energy and hopes that Bernie tapped. Others treat the issue with a profound ambivalence, as though no essential difference exists between a Clinton or Trump administration.

This line of thinking holds that progressive and left political groups would better serve their constituents and causes by refusing to enter into the incipient Clinton coalition. This self-fashioned third bloc of leftism sees itself confronting the same monster in either a Trump or Clinton presidency. They bolster their forces for what is predicted to be the same fight, regardless of electoral results.

The former concern merits response; the latter, a thorough, thought-out, and unequivocal rejection.

Clinton = Trump?

First, the claim that no essential difference can be found between the prospects of a Trump or Clinton presidency does not stand to even superficial examination. For starters, think about what a Trump presidency might look like. His insurgent attempt to steal the White House has failed to offer any concrete political program outside of his particular blend of Nativism and resentment.

Whatever its problems, Clinton's campaign regularly releases detailed policy proposals, subjecting the candidate to our ruthless criticisms. For all the bluster regarding Clinton's abhorrence of transparency, in this instance, there is no question as to which candidate gives the left the room it needs to form a programmatic response. "Better the devil you know," so they say.

But more than the issue of familiarity, a Trump presidency stands as a categorically worse situation. In spite its lack of density, the tenor of Trump's rhetoric offers a glimpse into the crushing defeat his presidency would represent for the left and for democratic movements generally. He willingly stirs up the divisive emotions of racism, xenophobic nationalism, and Islamophobia.

Race, nationality, and religion have all been tools historically utilized by the bourgeoisie to divide and conquer working people. To a large degree, this pattern defines the social history of our nation. Time and again, the capitalist class devastates working class solidarity by fanning these same flames.

A victory for Trump would legitimize these divisive forces in truly unprecedented ways. A Trump presidency would further the division between the white working class and 'the rest.' A Clinton presidency, by contrast, could offer an initial chance at rekindling solidarity within our fractured working class.

A landslide victory is needed

What, then, is essentially at stake on November 8, 2016? Nothing less than the cohesiveness of our working class. History proves that without cohesive solidarity among the members of the working class, social change and progress halts. A Trump victory would destroy the possibility of social change and progress by cementing the division of the working class for the foreseeable future.

For this reason, Hillary Clinton must not only win the election, but utterly destroy Trump's attempts to divide the working class against itself. A landslide victory by Clinton would delegitimize and destroy divisive 'Trumpist' politics.

In light of these considerations, anyone who considers themselves a part of the left must ensure Hillary Clinton defeats Donald Trump in the upcoming general election. Ambivalence has no place this time around.

No doubt, a degree of ambivalent feeling is to be expected when a candidate the caliber of Bernie Sanders comes up short in the leadership contest. This leads to some of those genuine concerns considered earlier.

Many progressives - millennials in particular it seems - distrust Clinton. They fear she is not only pandering to Sanders' former supporters, but outright misleading them. Some cast her as the neoliberal rube of the neoconservatives. Surely, Clinton's politics leave much to be desired.

The question becomes one, however, of how the insurgent forces Sanders unleashed can maintain their progressive energy when in coalition with an established Democrat the likes of Clinton.

The bulk of those asking such questions do not call for an outright rejection of Clinton as a candidate (like the aforementioned bloc of puritans), but instead wonder about how to maintain the vitality of an emergent practical and effective left. These are legitimate concerns, but they are largely of a theoretical nature in the current situation.

A Clinton victory leaves open the path to progress

Coalition-building and the theory thereof must be developed if Clinton seeks partnership and cooperation with the left. Criticism must remain vibrant in order to ensure liberals do not coopt and redirect the excitement and possibility Sanders unleashed. Otherwise, upon Clinton's victory, the forces of the left will enter into opposition, a place all-too-familiar for those voices.

Until then, progressives, leftists, and former Sanders supporters face an essential task: It is up to them to ensure the possibility of current and future working class solidarity is preserved.

A Trump victory would steal the momentum unleashed by Sanders and crush it with an agenda of social, political, and economic retrenchment. A Clinton victory would leave that momentum up for grabs. It would remain a force still able to seize the opportunity for moving history along.

Jim Roberts, age 22, is a recent graduate of the University of Virginia. He formerly volunteered for the Bernie Sanders campaign in that state. Jim currently resides in Los Angeles and engages in free-lance writing.

Photo: Presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. | AP

How do you solve a problem like Russia?

John Wojcik — Fri, 05 Aug 2016 16:27:00 +0000

One good way to solve the "problem" of Russia might be to avoid making that country into a major problem every chance we get. The neocons, along with some "liberal" Democrats unfortunately, are unlikely to cease doing this any time soon and have used recent emails dumped by WikiLeaks and statements made by Donald Trump to once again launch another anti-Russia crusade.

First, on WikiLeaks: The tons of emails released show that the DNC did its best to back Clinton over Sanders. Nothing at all was surprising there. Everyone and his brother and sister already knew the deal. The controversy arose though over the source of the leaks - over the as yet unsubstantiated claims that Russia was behind them. That was compounded by Trump encouraging Russia to use its alleged hacking skills to find out what was in some of the missing Hillary Clinton emails.

Adding wood to a potential fire here is the continued propensity of Russia's Putin to act more and more like the neocons in Washington he actually opposes. His tendency toward undemocratic behaviors, along with the scandals coming out of Russia involving the disappearance of and even the deaths of Putin opponents, don't help his image around the world.

The United States, of course, is itself in no position to lecture Russia on the norms of acceptable international behavior. Interfering in the elections of another country, even if indeed Russia did do that by hacking into computers, is certainly not something to be condoned. It's mild stuff though when compared to the ways in which the U.S. has interfered in the affairs of other countries using methods up to and including political assassination.

Dems indulge Russia fears

Some say we should not be concerned about Democrats opportunistically using the Russia card against Trump. Trump is so dangerous, the thinking goes, that what's the harm in drawing on the huge reserve of fear of Russia that exists in the U.S. if it can be used to weaken him? Liberals and progressives, including MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, have even jumped on that bandwagon. When Trump, in a temporary and rare moment of clarity or sanity, said Putin was not going to march into the Ukraine, the MSNBC commentators could barely contain their glee as they derided him for not realizing the "invasion" had already taken place.

Despite the fun some of the MSNBC commentators had on this matter at Trump's expense the situation is not really a laughing matter. At stake ultimately is the peace of the world. Both the U.S. and Russia have nuclear arsenals. The U.S. spends ten times as much as Russia spends on the military, so when neocons in the U.S. rattle against Russia, Putin takes it seriously. (He'd have to be as crazy as Trump not to do so.)

What disturbs me too is the willingness of some liberals and some Hillary Clinton supporters to join Republicans in backing the neocon strategy of NATO expansion and destabilization of Russia. I get uncomfortable when I hear Hillary say that she, unlike Trump, can be trusted to "stand up" to Putin.

It reminds me of the time in 2002 when some liberals, including the New York Times, bought into the claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. If you questioned those claims, you were characterized by some as supporting a dangerous dictator, Saddam Hussein, against the forces of democracy. Likewise, if you question some of the anti-Russia rhetoric now you are supporting a "homophobic," "demagogic," "nationalistic," "undemocratic," "sexist," "dictatorial" Putin.

Demonizing Russia is no way forward

Getting on the anti-Russia bandwagon at this time could also signal the beginning of real problems for us over the next few years. Pushing for conflict with Russia is a dangerous thing.

It can reverse the already successful collaboration between the two countries. The nuclear deal with Iran (a deal Trump opposes by the way) is the result of the direct cooperation between Presidents Obama and Putin.

Putin put quite a bit of pressure on Syria on another occasion and was able, together with President Obama, to get Syrian President Assad to dismantle his chemical weapons stockpile.

The neocons don't give up that easily though. After cooperation between Obama and Putin resulted in the dismantling of Syrian chemical weapons and after Obama rejected calls to bomb Syria, they made an even bigger, bolder move in the Ukraine.

They played their hand well in the Ukraine by backing a right-wing coup against the elected pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovich.

On one side was Yanukovich who wanted to resist EU austerity demands, and on the other were his opponents who wanted closer ties with the European Union. They actually reached a deal to avoid bloodshed, but it was scuttled when neo-Nazis and other right wingers staged the coup, forcing the elected government officials to run for their lives.

Russians living in Eastern Ukraine and Crimea rose up against the right-wing regime in Kiev. Russian troops were already in Crimea as part of a military nuclear base agreement reached when the old Soviet Union broke up. The use of those troops to protect the nuclear armaments and the ethnic Russians who make up most of the Crimean population against organized attacks sponsored by the Kiev government is what the major media here characterized as an "invasion." It's that "invasion" that MSNBC commentators joked about, claiming that Trump didn't know it had ever happened.

A referendum in Crimea went overwhelmingly in favor of re-unification with Russia. (Crimea had been part of the Russian Republic of the old Soviet Union until 1990.)

Many Russians in the eastern Ukraine pushed for a similar type of deal with Russia, but Putin turned them down. Instead, he lent some assistance to the Russian rebels in the eastern Ukraine. Some of those rebels went on to declare themselves autonomous republics inside the Ukraine.

One can argue about details of the above summary of the events in Ukraine, but there is no argument with the fact that Americans have heard a very different version - one of simple Russian attacks upon and invasion of Ukraine as part of some type of Russian plan to reclaim the entire old Soviet Union and then probably more of Europe. It's an argument which, upon careful examination, does not really hold up.

It is also impossible to deny that U.S. foreign policy has long included orchestration of coups, use of drones to kill political opponents, spying on allies and enemies alike, aerial bombing campaigns - you name it. NATO has expanded its reach to the very borders of Russia and the U.S. has participated in massive war games in Poland and the Baltic states. Russian movement of troops into its own Western regions, then, comes as no surprise.

Change course, but not by following Trump

The direction we should be moving in is a very different one.

We should have both the U.S. and Russia pledge to discontinue all interference in one another's internal affairs.

We should support a mutual pledge of "no first use" of nuclear weapons, one which the Obama administration is reportedly considering putting forward in the near future.

We should be rejecting the current U.S. Air Force plans for massive increases in U.S. nuclear capabilities.

Both countries should co-launch a new major initiative whereby the U.S., the EU, and Russia come together to solve the energy and environmental problems confronting their own countries and the world. Those are only a few suggestions, but they would make a good beginning.

One last warning: None of the concerns raised here about Democrats opportunistically playing the Russia card against Trump should be taken to mean that Trump is any kind of vehicle for cooperation with Russia. As mentioned, he has already trashed the Iran deal, which couldn't have happened without U.S. and Russian cooperation. Trump's only interest in Russia is how much money he can extract from it for his own benefit.

If Trump were elected, there is every reason to believe that the neocons would exploit his election to further their goals. Trump would be no peacemaker - not with Russia or with anybody else.

What is also troubling, however, is that if Democrats buy into the anti-Russia campaign now, they too may end up falling into a neocon trap in a Clinton administration. That would have dire consequences not just for world peace, but for their entire domestic program. The most progressive agenda ever put forward in the history of the Democratic Party cannot be implemented if we continue to spend untold billions on war and preparation for war.

Photo: Obama and Putin at UN headquarters. | Andrew Harnik/AP

Green Party “safe state” strategy is neither safe nor a strategy

John Bachtell — Fri, 05 Aug 2016 10:31:00 +0000

The Democratic and Republican party conventions are over and the presidential election has entered a new phase. The sprint is on to Election Day.

Since the GOP convention, which adopted its most reactionary platform ever, alarm has grown over the threat to democracy posed by Donald Trump, his appeal to hate and fear and policies that would cleave the nation and violate the constitution.

Practically every speech at the Democratic National Convention (DNC), including those by President Obama, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, emphasized this danger.

But the warning is also coming from some in the Republican Party establishment, past and current GOP elected officials, the foreign policy and national security establishment and big donors.

Trump's attack on the Khan family, parents of a Muslim American army captain killed in Iraq, created anger among military veterans and Gold Star families.

Unprecedented early endorsements of Clinton have appeared in the Washington Post and Houston Chronicle, which described Trump as a "danger to the Republic."

Many refer to Trump as an extreme authoritarian or worse, as a fascist.

The message from the DNC was the polar opposite. It reflected the broad electoral coalition backing Clinton, including the labor movement, African American, Latino, Asian and other communities of color, women, the LGBT community, youth, environmentalists, immigrant and disabled rights advocates.

It includes Bernie Sanders and his supporters, over 90% of whom, according to polls, now back Clinton. Those Sanders supporters were instrumental in shaping the Democratic platform which is widely regarded as its most progressive ever.

But there are still some progressives, including some Bernie or Bust activists, who refuse to support Clinton. They deeply despise her ties to Wall Street and call her a warmonger and a liar.

They see nothing positive in Clinton, her historic candidacy or the Democratic Party platform. They dismiss the broad electoral coalition, including the labor movement, that is backing Clinton and that has shaped the platform, a coalition with obvious leverage.

To them, she is as bad as Trump.

Some are voting for Green Party candidate Jill Stein to "send a message." Still others hope a Clinton defeat provokes a crisis in the Democratic Party leading to its break-up.

Others see the danger of Trump and want to defeat him. But like Sanders supporter and RootsAction.org founder Norman Solomon, they advocate a "safe state" strategy: vote for Clinton in the battleground states to ensure she wins but vote Green Party in the solidly blue (safe) or solidly red states.

This is a flawed strategy. First, like it or not, we have a two party system. One of the two major parties will win and govern. If this were a parliamentary democracy different tactics would be called for.

Wall Street interests may dominate both parties but they reflect vastly different electoral coalitions and class, racial and social make up.

Many leaders of labor, civil rights and other democratic grassroots movements, including democratic socialists, are leaders within the Democratic Party.

To call for a vote against Clinton is to separate oneself from this electoral coalition.

Secondly, it's dangerous to declare so-called "safe states." This election has been volatile and another terrorist attack, mass shooting or some calamity could make the outcome unpredictable.

In some blue "safe states" the GOP and right wing controls the governorships and state legislatures and in some cases have elected Republican U.S. Senators and have been busy passing voter suppression laws. Since voters often vote down a straight line a Clinton landslide in those states is need to sweep out of office the maximum number of GOP right wingers who now have a lock on sate governments across the country.

Trump has been dismissed at every turn as a "passing phenomena" and "unelectable". He has not only survived, but his extremist message resonates among millions and he has erased Clinton's fundraising advantage.

Left and progressive activists shouldn't make the same mistake as the pundits. Trump is a clear and present danger, an unpredictable candidate in an unpredictable election.

"Safe state" advocates forget the role of Ralph Nader and the Green Party in the 2000 elections. They were the difference in the vote in New Hampshire and Florida. The rest is history.

Thirdly, mandates are real. This election will be a national referendum on racism, misogyny, homophobia, xenophobia and Islamophobia. The aim should be a landslide defeat of Trump and a decisive rejection of hate.

The election of Clinton as the first woman president would make history. A landslide would not end sexism, but it would represent a mighty blow just as the election of President Obama was a blow against racism. It would advance democracy.

A landslide makes it more likely that GOP Congressional and state legislative majorities can be ousted and an end put to the politics of obstruction. Most people tend to vote straight ticket.

A landslide will give added weight to the progressive platform adopted at the Democratic Convention and give encouragement to appoint progressive Supreme Court justices. It would be added pressure against backsliding on opposition to TPP and other trade deals. It will put public opinion and the movements in a better position to pressure against Clinton's tendency toward military adventurism and policies of regime change.

With a Democratic president and Congress the post-election political terrain will shift and give immediate momentum to the new Clinton administration.

Even if Trump is defeated, the movement he spawned and the extremist ideas powering it will be a factor in politics for a long time to come. A massive repudiation of Trump will weaken and isolate this movement.

Fourthly, politics is more than voting one's conscience. It's about building electoral and governing coalitions that can broadly advance struggle on the issues. Voting is tactical and rarely does someone vote for candidates they agree with 100%.

One's associations also collectively shape voting. Unity of the broad people's coalition before, during and after the election will do more to ensure the progressive Democratic Party platform is implemented by the new Clinton administration.

The broad coalition of labor, communities of color, women, LGBT, young people, environmental, immigration, disability rights activists, etc. is the only force capable of effectively challenging corporate power and changing the country long term. This electoral coalition and its grassroots capacity are being built through the electoral process, giving it the ability to influence and mobilize key constituencies.

This coalition will not only continue to influence Clinton in a progressive direction, but forms the basis of growing political independence and a future labor-led third party that will advocate radical economic, political and social restructuring.

Parts of this electoral coalition are also taking up Sanders' challenge to run thousands of candidates at every level committed to the "political revolution."

Voting Green Party separates activists and voters from these key forces. One cannot credibly engage in mobilizations of labor, civil rights, women's organizations, LGBT community, and environmentalists while also advocating voting Green Party.

As in everything, if we struggle together and vote together, we win together. There's power in unity.

Photo: Voting Green Party in the blue states is neither safe nor sound. A Clinton landslide is needed in those states if their GOP state governments in power are going to be swept out of office. | Wikipedia (CC)

No free handouts: Politicians must work for the black and brown millennial vote

Michelle Zacarias — Thu, 04 Aug 2016 15:07:00 +0000

With the general election inching closer, the public is beginning to see some of the uglier sides of politics coming out of the woodwork this summer. Just last month, before the opening of the Democratic National Convention, it was announced that Debbie Wasserman Schultz was leaving her position as head of the Democratic National Committee. Her resignation was triggered by a scandal involving Wikileaks, which released 20,000 emails showing that Wasserman Schultz and members of her team were actively undermining the Sanders campaign. One message even suggested planting a narrative that portrayed the Sanders platform as a disorganized "mess."

This is not the first email controversy coming out of this election. For months, Hillary Clinton remained under the scrutiny of an extensive FBI investigation over deleted emails. Despite this barrier, Clinton has proven to be a force to reckon with. The Democrats pulled every play in the political book during the DNC, bringing in celebrities and the mothers of young black men and women who had been shot at the hands of police. Both Michelle and Barack Obama also publicly endorsed Clinton in separate speeches, and spoke fondly of their personal faith in her leadership abilities.

For what it was worth, reports indicated afterwards that Clinton's speech was ultimately viewed more favorably than Trump's, and her numbers jumped. 60% of viewers in one CNN/ORC poll stated they were more likely to vote for Clinton after watching her address.

Positive poll numbers aside, however, the fact still remains that the Democratic Party has long taken their diverse following of voters for granted - something they can no longer do. If the party wants to win over young voters of color, for instance, they will have to work hard to get those votes. They should not count on any free handouts.

Which way for the millennial vote?

With Sanders out of the race, many have speculated about what direction the millennial vote will go, and in particular, the votes of young people of color. A study conducted by the Pew Research Center estimated that this year's election will be the country's most racially and ethnically diverse ever. Nearly one-in-three eligible voters on Election Day, 31 percent, will be Hispanic, black, Asian or another racial or ethnic minority, inching up from 29 percent in 2012.

Obama's success throughout his presidential campaigns was largely a result of record-breaking turnout, particularly among African Americans. More than 130 million people voted in 2008 - the most ever in a presidential election. Additionally, the 2012 campaign against Romney marked the first time that African American voters turned out at a higher percentage than white voters in a presidential election.

It seems clear that in order for Clinton to pull off a solid victory, she must continue to reach out to marginalized populations and ensure that Black, Latinx, and Asian millennial votes are being represented. She has already established herself as a frontrunner with black voters, having won more than 70 percent of the African-American vote in most of the primary and caucus states with considerable African-American populations. She is statistically a favorite among an older generation of black voters, and has already begun to cement her position by speaking at Al Sharpton's National Action Network, for instance, and continuing to make appearances at black-based events.

But securing a win for the 2016 election will require Democrats to begin regaining the public trust and taking responsibility for the political dishonesty fostered within the DNC's electoral politics.

Democrats should take no one for granted

Of course, Democrats are not the only ones struggling to maintain a positive public image. Many conservatives have jumped ship from the sinking Trump Titanic, with rumors that the GOP is even looking for alternative options in case Trump drops out.

Liberal and conservative voters alike have felt gridlocked within the confines of a two-party system that does no longer truly represent their ideological beliefs. First-year Loyola University MBA student Daniel Cavero told the People's World that although he voted for John Kasich in the primaries, he does not believe he will be voting in the general election. "I don't feel like I can truly voice my opinion through either candidate. I also don't want to fall in the boat where I'm forced to pick between two candidates. I will probably just vote locally during the elections."

This form of political defiance resonates with many young voters, who have historically been known for opting out of the electoral process.

On another level, some progressive organizations have also decided against endorsing any presidential candidate for the 2016 election. Black Lives Matter co-founder Alicia Garza told The Guardian recently that she believes it's impossible to rally around anyone "who hasn't demonstrated that they feel accountable to the Black Lives Matter movement or network." She also expressed concern that politicians would attempt to co-opt movements for their own political gain.

It seems that youth more broadly share similar concerns, as polls in recent years have shown a historically low level of trust for the government among millennials. This may be part of the reason why they continue to have the lowest voter turnout of any age group. Only 46 percent of them showed up for the last presidential election; compared to 72 percent of the Silent Generation (age 71 and up).

There are others, however, who feel as though they have no choice but to vote, regardless of the uncertainty surrounding existing candidates. "I won't opt out of any election. It took too long to get that right. Even today there are states trying to limit that right with voter ID laws," said Shayla Glover, an educator from Columbus, Ohio. "I think even if people are unhappy about the choices on the presidential ticket, they still need to vote. 1/3 of the Senate is up for re-election and all of the House. If people chose to not vote for any candidate for president, I can respect that, but do vote for your local elections."

Latinx voters find themselves at a similar crossroads. For the most part, Clinton has banked on Trump's overwhelming unpopularity among Latinx communities. Yet, she herself has been part of an administration with higher deportation rates than any other in history. She has even defended President Obama on the matter, stating that "there are laws that impose certain obligations" on the President.

Clinton has shifted some of her thoughts on undocumented immigration, though, pledging in March not to deport any undocumented immigrants except in the case of violent criminals and terrorists. Many wonder, however, whether she will hold true to her word.

What next?

The more important question becomes: what happens next?

There are sectors of previous Sanders supporters who have decided they will stick to their anti-establishment ideals. A few will supposedly throw their support behind Trump. Others will back Green Party candidate Jill Stein. Nine out of ten, however, have stated that they will eventually end up voting for Clinton.

In the meantime, the nation is coming to understand the importance of addressing the critical issues stemming from systemic injustice. It is no longer acceptable to simply overlap racial and class discourse into a conglomerate discussion. Rather, it is necessary to directly examine the individual needs of black and brown communities.

Though Clinton may have her work cut out for her, there is still time for the Democratic Party to redeem itself and prove that the nation can truly represent even the most underrepresented of voices.

Photo: Local activists and attendees at Netroots Nation 15 March in to Phoenix Sheriff's Department demanding Sheriff Joe Arpaio be arrested. Earchiel Johnson | PW

Trumka: An abundant worldview leads to shared prosperity

Kenneth Quinell — Thu, 04 Aug 2016 12:53:00 +0000

WASHINGTON - In an essay for the National Catholic Reporter, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka writes about how approaching politics requires an abundant worldview if you want to achieve shared prosperity. An excerpt:

"Any politician who wants the support of the AFL-CIO must answer a fundamental moral question: Will you choose a world of scarcity or one of abundance?

"A vision of scarcity leads to the building of walls, the turning away of refugees, and the denial of vital services to the most vulnerable among us. A vision of scarcity leads us away from compassion and toward a bitter and impoverished society....

"On issue after issue-whether raising wages or investing in roads, bridges, schools and water systems-an abundant worldview leads to broadly shared prosperity.

"Economists don't use religious terms, typically, but time and again they tell us of the success that comes from investing in ourselves. We are all enriched, literally, when we welcome immigrants and when we take care of each other...."

Read the full essay.

The above story appeared on the AFL-CIO Now Blog

Photo: Parents, students and supporters in solidarity with Chicago teachers. Teresa Albano/PW

What does Black liberation look like under capitalism?

Chauncey K. Robinson — Wed, 03 Aug 2016 13:55:00 +0000

Ed. note: This article is the second in a series on Black Lives Matter and capitalism. Click here to read the previous article.

As the nation continues to deal with the aftermath of the police murders of two Black men, Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, along with the five officers shot and killed in Dallas Texas just days after, we are faced with America's ever-present problem of racial oppression.

We saw in the first article in this series that the lasting history of chattel slavery, the creation of Jim Crow segregation, and the new Jim Crow of the Prison Industrial Complex all emerged under a system that depends heavily on exploitation of African-American labor for profit.

How then do movements for Black liberation and racial equality combat such systemic oppression? Recent movements such as Black Lives Matter have been grappling with this question as the various groups underneath the unifying slogan put forth a comprehensive set of demands to combat the police brutality that disproportionately affects African Americans. Yet the struggle that the Black Lives Matter movement has brought to the fore is not a new one.

Since the birth of this nation, brought about through the labor of enslaved Black people, there have been movements to deal with America's race problem. These movements have changed the political context for government and politicians to act, and they experienced backlash and internecine clashes of perspectives as well. How have collective movements already changed the political context for policies and reforms to be made? How can emerging movements build power to change it further? Since we know the problems we face are not new ones, if we take a look back on history we can see what answers we have discovered in the course of struggle to add to the narrative of change going forward.

From Booker T. Washington to W.E.B. DuBois

The abolition of slavery at the end of the Civil War ushered in the era of Radical Reconstruction from 1865-1877. It was a time of hope-and of legislative gains. But the Compromise of 1877 sabotaged Radical Reconstruction and left the Black community unprotected by law from the aggression of the descendants of slaveholders and the domestic terrorist organizations they formed, such as the Klu Klux Klan. Racial tensions were high all across the country, as Jim Crow segregation began to take hold. Black Americans were left with the question of where they fit into the structure of the United States -- and what was needed for advancement.

Educator, author, and occasional presidential advisor, African American Booker T. Washington, dominated the debates in the late 1800s through the early 1900s. Washington's idea was that in order to maintain racial peace, and prosperity for African Americans, Black people needed to learn skills that the world (white people) found valuable. There was an emphasis on the importance of acquiring land, homes, vocations and skills, along with obeying the law and cooperating with white authorities to maintain peace. Washington believed that entrepreneurship and industrial education would lead to prosperity for Black America rather than directly challenging the laws of Jim Crow segregation.

In his famous speech entitled "The Atlanta Compromise," Washington stated:

"The wisest among my race understand that the agitation of questions of social equality is the extremest folly, and that progress in the enjoyment of all the privileges that will come to us must be the result of severe and constant struggle rather than of artificial forcing... The opportunity to earn a dollar in a factory just now is worth infinitely more than the opportunity to spend a dollar in an opera-house."

Yet some disagreed with Washington's viewpoint that Blacks could only gain prosperity through economic means. A leading opponent of Washington's view was historian, sociologist, and early civil rights activist W.E.B. DuBois.

DuBois explained that Washington's solutions were too narrow and limited to economic objectives. In one of his most famous writings, The Souls of Black Folk, DuBois accused Washington of preaching a "gospel of Work and Money to such an extent as apparently almost completely to overshadow the higher aims of life." DuBois also argued that Black people had to fight for an increase in political and civil status, for without that, under the modern economic system Black people could not defend their rights (such as to land, businesses, etc.) and would be forced to exist without the vote.

DuBois was a leader and founder of the Niagara Movement, an early black civil rights organization that openly fought against racial segregation and disenfranchisement. With the Niagara Movement's Declaration of Principles, of which DuBois was a co-author, it became the first African American organization to demand racial equality in all aspects of life. When the Niagara movement disbanded in 1908 DuBois went on to help found the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) which would go on to be a leading force in the Civil Rights Movement. It was clear heading into the mid 20^th Century that many in the Black community believed ownership of land and jobs was not enough, and that prosperity had to come about through full recognition of equality and inclusion.

Civil Rights, nonviolence, urban uprisings, and Black Power

Just as the end of chattel slavery in the U.S. brought forth the question of where African Americans fit in society, so too did the end of the "separate but equal" doctrine that dominated the land since 1868. Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 saw a legal end to Jim Crow segregation, bringing about the 1954-1968 era of the Civil Rights Movement. During this time African Americans fought to ensure legal recognition and federal protection of their citizenship rights.

Acts of nonviolence and civil disobedience dominated the strategy of the movement as a means to force a dialogue between activists and government authorities. Campaigns within the movement, such as the successful Montgomery Bus Boycott, which helped put an end to the unconstitutional act of segregation on public transit, helped to keep the issue of racial oppression at the forefront of American's minds. Another victory of this movement was the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that outlawed discrimination based on race, religion, sex, and national origin.

In his "Letter from Birmingham City Jail," Martin Luther King Jr. explained that the nonviolent campaign had four basic steps to determine if action needed to be taken; (1) Collection of the facts to determine whether injustices are alive. (2) negotiation (3) self purification (4) direct action."

While the Civil Rights movement made major gains it was not enough to stop the unrest felt in many of the urban cities throughout the country as unemployment in poor inner cities dominated by African Americans was on the rise, along with police harassment. There would be a series of riots starting from 1964 through 1968 including the Harlem riot of 1964, the six days Watts riot of 1965, the Detroit riot of 1967, and the riots following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968. Although segregation was no longer legal, it seemed to be de facto in the inner cities as white flight left many poor African Americans behind in dilapidated housing, high rates of unemployment, and high tensions with predominantly white police forces. The riots would result in further property devastation in cities, and a number of deaths.

Into the midst of these riots emerged the Black Power movement. This was a movement characterized by people frustrated with the nonviolence and integration strategy associated with the Civil Rights movement, and sought more radical tactics to ensure Black liberation. The organization that would become synonymous with the Black Power movement would be the Black Panther Party (BPP).

Launched in Oakland, California, The Black Panthers was a Black led organization which used armed citizen patrols to challenge police brutality in Black dominated neighborhoods. The Black Panthers' program, called the Ten Point Platform, included demands of self-determination for the black community, livable housing, better education, employment, an end to police brutality in Black communities, and freedom for Black prisoners. The Panthers implemented the successful "Free Breakfast for Children Program" that aimed to provide free meals for Black families in their neighborhoods, while also shining light on the shortcomings of the U.S. government's so called War on Poverty. The Black Panther party would rise in popularity from its inception in 1966 until its decline in the early 1980s.

As the documentary film Black Panther Party: Vanguard of the Revolution showed, the fall of the Panthers was largely orchestrated by the U.S government, through its Counterintelligence Program known as COINTELPRO, as they were seen as a major threat to the system. It should be noted that COINTELPRO also targeted the Civil Rights Movement. This FBI operation aimed to dismantle the various influential organizations fighting for Black liberation. COINTELPRO organized undercover agents to infiltrate these movements along with carrying out targeted assassinations of Black Panther leaders Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, along with national leader Malcolm X. The Black Panthers was an organization of activists who were part of a long line of activists going against a system bent on continuing the exploitation of Black people.

Yet although the Black Panthers, which was largely a nationalist organization, became synonymous with the emergence of Black Power, their primary work was to courageously fight against segregation and racial oppression. What helped their work be more effective was the work of a massive united multiracial movement, including more mainstream organizations such as the NAACP, that during this time were also fighting for liberation.

New movements, continued struggles - and more work to be done

Through a brief look at the history of movements for Black liberation we have seen that there have been gains made to combat the embedded anti-black racism within the system. Yet even with the gains made, there is plenty of work that still needs to be done. Continued police violence, a staggering increase of Blacks and Latinos disenfranchised and held captive in the prison industrial complex, and the continued poverty of many African Americans - these show that the old battles are still being fought. The American dream of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, continues to be elusive to Black America as a whole. The question remains: were Black Americans ever meant to be part of the American dream in the first place?

As revolutionary Black leader Malcolm X stated in 1964 in his famous speech The Ballot or the Bullet, "No, I'm not an American. I'm one of 22 million black people who are the victims of Americanism... I'm speaking as a victim of this American system. I don't see any American dream; I see an American nightmare."

It is within this "nightmare" that emerging movements have continued to try to find some semblance of hope. Newer movements such as Black Lives Matter (BLM) and Moral Mondays are continuing the tradition of using various strategies of civil disobedience, protests, and publicized demands, to call attention to the racial oppression faced by African Americans in the United States. Through their actions they have won some victories. Yet they have also faced a backlash reminiscent of the criticisms that organizations fighting for Black liberation faced in the past.

With the recent lone gunmen shootings that have resulted in the deaths of some police officers, for instance, there has been an increased push to paint Black Lives Matter as a movement of violence and hate. This is not dissimilar to the rhetoric once used against the Black Panther Party during its early years. As BLM activist Janae Bonsu explained in a July 2016 article in People's World:

"If history is any prologue, the narrative that is being built... is going to be used to catapult a far-reaching strategy to criminalize the movement for Black lives' commitment to resistance and accountability. We've seen this before in the Civil Rights Movement that coincided with the War on Crime... These measures are nothing more than attempts to censor and criminalize political resistance and protests of police violence. Lawmakers aren't trying to protect officers; they're trying to suppress a movement."

Yet, despite this backlash, organizations under Black Lives Matter have continued to put forth demands and organize demonstrations to bring about an end to police brutality and unjust policing of the African American community. Most recently has been a united platform entitled A Vision for Black Lives: Policy Demands for Black Power, Freedom, & Justice. In this comprehensive platform, activists touch upon key issues such as economic justice, the fight for reparation, and Black people having control of their own communities. One of the opening lines of the platform summarizes accurately that "Black humanity and dignity requires Black political will and power."

This platform is a step in the direction of addressing the unfinished work to be done from the time of movements before Black Lives Matter. Like those movements of the early 1900s into the late 1970s, we don't have a clear idea of what the end result of that work will look like until it is achieved. Despite this uncertainty we have no choice but to work towards something that dismantles this system of oppression and exploitation tied to profit for the wealthy white elite.

As American activist and vice chair of the Communist Party USA Jarvis Tyner stated in his 2016 article Black lives matter! The struggle against police murders, brutality and abuse, "The revolutionary process is not a sprint, but a marathon... The movements that we see today are a continuation of the great battles for freedom that went before. If we win the battle at this stage, the struggle will move to a higher level, embracing more that needs to change."

Just as the oppression of Black people is baked into the oppressive system we live under, so too is the continued fight for Black liberation intertwined with the shaping of our nation. This fight for liberation has already influenced our laws and culture; it will continue to do so.

Photo: Political Research (CC)

How dare Trump belittle the memory of a fallen American soldier

Celeste Zappala — Wed, 03 Aug 2016 13:24:00 +0000

This article was reposted from Philly Voice.

Watching Mr. and Mrs. Khan on Thursday night speaking at the convention, I began to cry.

My phone lit up as friends checked in to assure me they were watching. I was acutely aware of Mrs. Khan's trembling face, and felt great empathy for her being on that stage, exposed and trying so hard to keep her emotions in tact.

I watched Mr. Khan slip his arm around her, and thought how much comfort they must take in each other. When Mr. Khan pulled out the Constitution from his pocket, I cheered. Yes , I thought, yes this has needed to be said on a major stage for all these months of campaigning - that the sacrifices of families in these long miserable years of war have come from people of all faiths.

I have seen Humayan Khan's stone in Section 60 at Arlington National Cemetery. I have attended funerals there, and memorials. It is very clear to me that the stones reflect the young, precious lives lost, and they may show a symbol of the fallen soldier's faith, but they never show a sign of their political party, nor a dollar sign to show their wealth.

How dare he befoul the air around the memory of a fallen soldier and attack his mother.

When I heard Donald Trump's response to the Khans, and how he insulted that Gold Star mother, my rage and sorrow were rekindled.

My son, Sgt. Sherwood Baker, was killed six weeks before Humayan. Sherwood died in an explosion while serving with the Iraq Survey Group as they searched for nonexistent weapons of mass destruction. For many years my deep sense of loss and anger, coupled with a need to speak the truth, fueled me to speak out against the war in Iraq at every opportunity. I faced ridicule and scorn as well as support.

One of the things I always talked about was that beneath the stones of Arlington are laid heroes of every faith, every gender identity, every color. They all tried to do their duty as they saw it, and what we can ask of ourselves to honor them is to be better citizens.

So there on Thursday night stood two beautiful citizens, who paid dearly to be present. They spoke out against intolerance and falsehood, and to that, anyone should just say thank you.

But Donald Trump took the opportunity to insinuate that Mrs. Khan was not permitted to speak because of her faith. Typically, in his cowardly way, he blamed other people for asking if her Muslim faith forbade her to to have an opinion.

In answer to Mr. Khan's question about sacrifice, Trump claimed his reckless business deals and tall bankrupt buildings were the sum of his sacrifice. Seeing that, I began to cry with rage. How dare he befoul the air around the memory of a fallen soldier and attack his mother, and somehow claim some equivalency of loss.

Trump is the worst example of a citizen in the United States of 2016, out to destroy the trust we must have in each other, out to belittle and humiliate anyone who gets in his way, out to achieve power at any and all costs.

Today, I cry for all the lost, and for this Country, once again.

Celeste Zappala is the mother of Army Sgt. Sherwood Baker, who was killed in April 2004 by an explosion in Baghdad, Iraq while deployed with the Pennsylvania National Guard. She is a long-time resident of Mt. Airy in northwest Philadelphia and an active member of First United Methodist Church of Germantown since the 1970s.

Photo: Paul Sancya/AP

Blue lines, Black lives: Policing at a crossroads

Rev. Jim Conn — Wed, 03 Aug 2016 11:46:00 +0000

As long as I can remember, there's been an argument over policing in the Black community. Do police patrol more intensely because the crime rate is higher there, or do higher crime statistics result from heightened levels of policing? When I did my first ride-alongs with the Los Angeles Police Department almost five decades ago, South Los Angeles felt like an occupied colony patrolled by a mostly white department. On the other hand, I often heard a demand from many neighborhood voices asking for a greater police presence because they wanted a safer community.

Safer communities or more occupation? That feels like a bad choice. Blue on Black violence or Black on blue violence? That doesn't feel like a choice at all. Yet here we are, in America, too many years later, stranded between either/or: The police feel attacked and the community - especially the young - feels besieged.

The statistics are much more complex, even confusing. Out of about 900,000 sworn officers in America, according to the memorial page on Officer Down, 130 police lost their lives in the line of duty in 2015. A much smaller number, 41, died due to shootings. Decade to decade, the numbers for officers shot and killed vary widely: In the 1970s an average of 127 police were shot and killed each year; from 2000 to 2009, 57 police were shot and killed on average. Between 2014 and 2015 the number of officers shot decreased 14 per cent. Like I said, confusing.

During all these years, a greater number of people were killed by the police. According to the FBI, about 400 people are killed each year by officers at all levels of government. But in the first five months of last year, police shot and killed 385 people, according to the Washington Post, a sharp increase over most years. About half of those killed were white. Of the total, almost one in six were unarmed or carrying a toy. But among unarmed victims of police shootings, two-thirds were Black or brown. Overall, reports the Post, Blacks were shot and killed at three times the rate of the population as a whole.

Moreover, in the first five months of last year nearly half of all police shootings involved civilians 18 to 34 years old. Perhaps these youth still felt the illusion of invincibility. Perhaps they acted abruptly or erupted rashly. We don't know. We do know that about half of police shootings occur in mundane circumstances: domestic violence situations, a potential suicide, a mentally ill homeless person acting out. These are certainly dramatic situations, but these sorts of calls happen every day. Theoretically, they should not end in anyone dying.

A new study correlates police stops with police shootings. It claims that Blacks and Latinos are no more likely to be shot while interacting with the police than the general population. However, they are more likely to be stopped by police than either Asian-Americans or non-Hispanic whites. And when stopped, they are also more likely to be arrested.

And the National Bureau of Economic Research has found that when stopped, officers were more likely to use pepper-spray or handcuffs, or to point a weapon at a Black person than they would a white person.

These studies paint a picture that looks to me like racial prejudice is alive and well in America. Consciously or not, when people live along stratified socio-economic corridors we cut off one ethnicity and economic group from another. Then as a people we carry an illness, a disease: We do not know each other. So we bring our perceptions and fears into our encounters with those who remain unknown to us.

In the case of the police those perceptions and fears can be lethal. Because they both carry a gun and wear a uniform, officers may feel simultaneously more powerful and more vulnerable. Their power comes not from a gun, but from the overwhelming support of average Americans. Their authority comes from our approval, not our fear of them. Their vulnerability may exist because they are easy targets from unknown threats and unfamiliar differences. Unknown is the risk they take and for which we honor them. The unfamiliar is a condition that can be remedied, and must be, if we are going to live together as a nation of diverse peoples.

Rev. Jim Conn is the founding minister of the Church in Ocean Park and served on the Santa Monica City Council and as that city's mayor. He helped found Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice, Los Angeles, and was its second chair, and was a founder of Santa Monica's renter's rights campaign.

Reprinted with permission from the author and Capital and Main.

Photo by St. Louis County Prosecutor's Office.

GOP is not embracing gays, no matter what Peter Thiel says

C.J. Atkins — Fri, 22 Jul 2016 09:17:00 +0000

CLEVELAND - For the first time ever at a Republican National Convention, delegates received a rebuke for their party's retrograde stance on LGBTQ rights. Silicon Valley tech billionaire Peter Thiel, the openly gay co-founder of PayPal and friend of Trump, told those assembled, "I am proud to be gay. I am proud to be a Republican. But most of all, I am proud to be an American."

He warned them that "fake culture wars" over homosexuality distract the party from what's important. Many television commentators were gushing over the historic nature of Thiel's address, musing over whether it represented a shift away from the harsh anti-gay stance taken by the GOP in previous years. It's all part of a narrative that some gay conservatives have been attempting to construct the last few days.

"Most pro-LGBT convention ever"?

Gregory Angelo, head of the gay conservative group Log Cabin Republicans, claimed Thursday, "This week, the Republican party hosted the most pro-LGBT convention in its history." He was referring to the multiple (non-negative) references made to LGBTQ people in the speeches of such unexpected names as Ted Cruz and Newt Gingrich. Even Trump himself, in his grand finale Thursday night, said it was "no good" that the "barbarians of ISIS" and a "radical Islamic terrorist" had targeted the LGBTQ community in Orlando.

RNC 2016, gays are led to believe, proves that the Republican Party is finally welcoming them in.

Judging by the spike of ads for gay sex that have been placed on Craigslist in Cleveland this week, it's certainly true that there a lot of gay Republicans in town. How many of those are out and proud and how many are repressed closet cases, however, is hard to know. It really doesn't matter though.

The very fact that an openly gay man was given a primetime speaking slot to discuss homosexuality and the culture wars is of course an important milestone. No matter the political point of view expressed, you can't take that away from Thiel and the Republicans. But when the rubber hits the road, Thiel and Angelo are really playing a spin game.

And that's because the Republican Party just adopted its most anti-LGBTQ platform ever.

Platform takes homophobia to a new level

While Trump's populism and his authoritarian image as a protector of the oppressed may be wooing some gays, the lip service paid to LGBTQ equality is just that. This year's Republican plan for what they will do if they win in November is chock full of language that makes clear, in no uncertain terms, exactly what the party collectively thinks of LGBTQ Americans.

The platform includes a call to reverse marriage equality by overturning the Obergefell Supreme Court verdict. It proclaims, "Our laws and our government's regulations should recognize marriage as the union of one man and one woman." LGBTQ parents too are dismissed, since supposedly only "a married mom and dad" are able to properly raise children.

Legal protections for LGBTQ people in their dealings with private companies are dismissed out of hand. The right of businesses to reject gay customers is to be preserved against "government discrimination." The final document also comes out strongly against transgender people in opposing the redefinition of "sex discrimination to include sexual orientation or other categories." The states who are fighting to put in place anti-trans bathroom bills are given a strong "salute."

Perhaps most shocking of all, conversion therapy aimed at turning people un-gay - a process that has been thoroughly discredited as ineffective and even harmful -- is given the seal of approval. Apparently homosexuality is still assumed by Republicans to be just a choice or a defect that can be repaired. Easy to forget it is 2016.

Rachel Hoff, the first openly lesbian Republican to serve on the party platform committee, was driven to contemplate resigning from the GOP after being shot down every time she proposed amendments to soften the platform's anti-gay stances. She wasn't even trying to get them to embrace marriage equality. All she asked was for the insertion of a line saying Republicans had different views on the issue.

It was a bridge too far. Out of 112 members, only 23 offered their support. Distraught, Hoff asked, "What future will our party have if we are so out of touch with young Americans?"

Even Log Cabin's Angelo admitted, "It's the most anti-LGBT platform in history." Other conservative principles, however, are apparently still enough to keep him and other gay Republicans in line with the Trump-Pence ticket.

Mixed signals

So what gives with the GOP's two-faced approach to gay issues at this convention? They put a gay man on stage, Trump and others give a shout out to protecting LGBTQ people, and yet the party adopts its most backward platform on this community's issues ever.

It is all a calculated affair. Putting Thiel up there to talk about how proud he was to be a gay Republican American was a gamble, but not an overly risky one. The Trump campaign and the GOP tested the waters for easing off gay issues, but in a way that doesn't threaten the rest of the party's ideology. He himself is not of the exact same ilk as the Evangelical fundamentalists who stuffed the platform full of homophobia.

Thiel is the model homosexual for a party like the GOP. He's a white entrepreneur who subscribes to the party's obsessions with Hillary's emails and Benghazi. He goes even further down the far right road, though. Calling himself a libertarian, Thiel advocates monopoly industries, wants companies to be structured like monarchies, and extols the virtues of "nondemocratic government."

It's totally reactionary stuff - just like the rest of the GOP platform and the Trump plan for America.

Photo: Despite his "embrace" of LGBTQ people in his Cleveland Convention speech, Trump is on record against LGBTQ equality. Screenshot from a CNN interview.

Republican convention: Trump advisor calls for Hillary Clinton’s execution

C.J. Atkins — Wed, 20 Jul 2016 23:25:00 +0000

CLEVELAND - Vendors hawking souvenirs and political ephemera line the sidewalks and streets of downtown Cleveland. Hoping to cash in with all the Republican National Convention delegates, they've brought truckloads of buttons, t-shirts, books, Donald Trump bobbleheads, and more. For the political collector, there's tons to choose from. The hottest-selling item this week according to one salesman: a t-shirt emblazoned with the slogan, "Hillary sucks, but not like Monica."

It's a cheap reference to the Monica Lewinsky scandal that engulfed Bill Clinton's White House in 1998. As the old saying goes, sex sells. Apparently the same can be said of sexism. As crass as the Monica button is though, that's not the worst on display here. It's actually just the beginning. "Trump that Bitch" and "Trump vs. the Tramp" are oft-heard chants. Flyers detailing Clinton's supposed crimes are handed out with the headline, "Lock the bitch up!"

Bitch is a popular word with these people.

Now they want Hillary dead

And today the sexist paranoia around the former secretary of State perhaps reached its crescendo. Throwing Hillary in prison is no longer enough.

Now, they actually want to kill her.

Al Baldasaro, a New Hampshire RNC delegate and Trump's advisor on veteran's issues, publicly called for the execution of Hillary Clinton. Speaking about Benghazi and the deleted emails on talk radio this morning, Baldasaro said, "Hillary Clinton should be put in the firing line and shot for treason."

It would seem like the intensity of their hatred for Clinton has reached its ultimate level. Then again, maybe the misogyny still has further to go yet. There's one more day remaining in the convention, after all, and Trump himself has yet to address the delegates. And the Republican nominee has a solid record of his own when it comes to sexism, womanizing, and attacks on women generally.

Recently, there were the public fights with Fox News host Megyn Kelly ("blood coming out of her wherever") and Senator Elizabeth Warren ("Goofy Pocahontas"). They're just the latest though. Dozens of women have come forward with lurid tales of his misdeeds over the decades. His nomination has certainly ramped up the level of gender-based vitriol against Clinton on the national scene, just as it has done for race and religion. But this is not just a Trump phenomenon. He is the endgame of the anti-woman policies the Republican Party has been pursuing for years.

From ever-escalating restrictions on freedom of choice and affirmative action, to opposing family leave and pay equity policies, the GOP has long been greasing the skids for their current slide into open sexism. Trump is their product.

What are Republican women thinking?

With such a spirit of machismo on display at the RNC and open calls for violence being heard, how do Republican women feel about the anti-woman turn their party has taken?

If Rita Gaus and Cynthia Schaffer, delegates from Illinois, are representative, many apparently don't see any problem at all. They insist that Trump and the Republican Party are "not targeting Hillary because she's a woman, but because of her crimes." For them, claims that there is sexism at the convention are simply a political game.

"If you are a confident woman, you won't be offended," Schaffer reasons. "If Clinton is offended, that's just belittling women." Hillary's just too soft and can't take a little heat.

Gaus agrees. "Some people use their womanhood for their political benefit; they make themselves the victim to get an advantage." According to her, it's all opportunism. "Every time someone has an argument with a colored person, they are racist. If it's a gay, then they are anti-gay. If it's a woman, they are sexist."

Schaffer says her candidate's past controversies over his treatment of women aren't troubling. "Even if the guy [Trump] is a sexist, that's his problem." She's willing to overlook it. There are bigger issues at stake, she believes.

"I used to think he was a big buffoon," Schaffer added, but "it was his plan to Make America Great Again" that sold her on the Trump ticket. Both she and Gaus are ready for the wall. "We look at all the refugees," Gaus argues, "who want to slaughter us, murder us, and rape us." Trump is apparently the strongman who can protect the country from the rest of the world.

As for all the convention buttons ridiculing Hillary Clinton's breast size and her thighs, or the t-shirts bragging about Trump's big balls? Gaus and Schaffer laugh it all off. Just a few jokes; no need to get offended, they say.

History will look back at this moment

The Clinton campaign recently released an ad titled "Role Models." In it, the eyes of children are transfixed on the television screen as some of Trump's most offensive statements from the campaign are heard. "Our children are watching," the commercial says, "What example will we set for them?" It's a masterful piece of political propaganda.

But it makes a very important point. The Trump campaign is placing a decision before Americans about who we want to be as a country. The outcome of the 2016 election is one that will go a long way in determining whether the nation embraces its multiracial and multicultural reality, or begins a trek back toward some supposedly "great" America where women and racial minorities knew their place.

As for the GOP, its members have decisions to make about what kind of party they will be. For years, they have embraced more racism, more anti-immigrant rhetoric, more Islamophobia, and more sexism. The party's leaders have employed a divisive ideology that seeks to split people apart and keep them fighting each other. If the 99 percent are kept busy fearing and blaming one another for their problems, they will never see it is Trump and the rest of the billionaire class who make up the 1 percent that really benefit from disunity.

Some will dismiss all of this week's Hillary-hating festival in Cleveland as simply the indulgences of the fringe element of the Republican Party - the paranoid obsessions of the rabble. Others, like Gaus and Schaffer, may attempt to laugh off the buttons and t-shirts as just lighthearted humor. But neither of those are the case, no matter what some embarrassed Republicans might try to argue.

This is what the GOP has allowed itself to become. As he has done with racism and Islamophobia, Donald Trump has made sexism okay again. Republicans have embraced him and his message. The political culture of their party has descended even further into the cesspool of hatred.

For the precedent they are setting, the whole Republican Party will have to answer to history.

Photo: Anti-Hillary Clinton buttons on sale at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. | C.J. Atkins/PW

Is a Black Lives Matter alliance with the police possible?

Tony Pecinovsky — Tue, 19 Jul 2016 22:45:00 +0000

ST. LOUIS - These past few weeks have been a devastating time for both the African American community and for law enforcement.

It has been more than two weeks since the killing of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, and more than a week since the shooting death of five Dallas police officers.

Tensions, undoubtedly, remain high as community activists, the Black Lives Matter movement and many trade unions navigate the dynamics of calling for justice and reform, while acknowledging the inherent difficulties and dangers associated with wearing a badge.

These tensions flared up here in St. Louis in an especially divisive and troubling way.

The morning after the Dallas killings Jeff Roorda, an ex-cop, former state representative and the current business manager of the St. Louis Police Officers' Association (SLPOA), added fuel to the fire.

First, Roorda posted a photo to his Facebook page of two bloodied hands with the caption "Four Officers Dead In Dallas. THIS BLOOD IS ON YOUR HANDS, MR. PRESIDENT." Then the SLPOA's official Twitter page reposted Roorda's post with the added comment, "I hope you're happy @BarackObama."

Not only were Roorda's comments distasteful and untrue, they served to add pressure to an already strained relationship between St. Louis area police and the African American community.

It should be emphasized that Ferguson, Missouri - where Michael Brown was killed two years ago this August - is roughly thirty miles from St. Louis.

As if Roorda's and the SLPOA's actions weren't harmful enough, they also called for the resignation of two sitting Alderpeople, Cara Spencer (Ward 20) and Antonio French (Ward 21), due to their support of the African American Police Officers' Association, also known as Esop Genesis, and its vote of no confidence in Police Chief Sam Dotson.

The African American Police Officers' Association, with about 220 members representing about 20 percent of the St. Louis police force, had issued a 112-page report accusing the chief of unfair disciplinary procedures, unfairly promoting white officers and prioritizing resources to the more affluent and white downtown area, while the predominantly Black north city neighborhoods were systematically under-resourced.

Esop Genesis is currently suing the city over its racist hiring and promotion practices.

Spencer and French publicly supported Esop Genesis' report and the moderate reforms outlined therein. Spencer calmly suggested that the report "should be taken seriously."

French questioned Roorda's leadership and tweeted, "Jeff Roorda is not a St. Louis City cop. He does not live in St. Louis. @SLPOA should not let him speak for them."

Shortly thereafter, the SLPOA issued the tweet, "We have asked for both you [Spencer] and @AntonioFrench to resign...I guess you don't take your own words seriously."

Spencer is a single mom and French is African American. Both represent constituents often at odds with the majority white male dominated police force. And both have been vocal supporters of Black Lives Matter.

At a time when the police, the community and elected officials should be finding ways to work together, to build bridges geared towards a common approach to the very complex realities confronted by both the African American community and the police - especially, African American police - it is unfortunate that the white male leadership of the SLPOA chose to be defensive and divisive, to attack the very people it should be reaching out to.

Like all unions, the SLPOA is not a hegemonic group. There are different political perspectives held by officers within the association, evidenced by Esop Genesis' report.

Undoubtedly, Roorda does not speak for all St. Louis area police, especially African American police.

However, this social media melee has served to illustrate at least one important tactical question confronted by Black Lives Matter activists across the country - the need to work with police, especially African American police, in the struggle for justice and reform.

Arguably, neither justice nor reform is possible without dialog with the police, especially African American police and women officers.

From a tactical perspective, identifying fissure points within the police - emphasizing disparities between white and Black officers, for example, as a way to build unity with the Black Lives Matter movement - cannot and should not be ignored.

Demonstrating her willingness to build bridges and identify allies - within the police and within the community - Alderwoman Spencer earlier this week organized a "massive clean-up" in Gravois Park, one of Ward 20's largest, most used public spaces. My former neighborhood.

"This is community policing at its best and I believe community policing is an essential component of crime prevention," Spencer told the People's World.

"Black Lives Matter," she added. "And one of the best ways to protect Black lives is through community-police dialog and understanding. We have to build trust if we are going to end the cycle of violence."

Whether out of embarrassment, internal or external pressure, the SLPOA has removed the offensive tweets.

Roorda, however, appeared on CNN the day after the Dallas killings claiming the Black Lives Matter movement was responsible for the deaths due to what he called "rhetoric that foments violence."

There is currently a petition circulating on social media calling for the SLPOA to fire Roorda.

Bruce Franks, a state rep. candidate in the 78th District covering much of downtown St. Louis, told the World, "The POA has to meet ESOP at the table. If the POA can't deal with racial disparities within the Department, how are they going to deal with disparities in the neighborhood."

"That we even have two separate associations is a problem. We might as well still have separate water fountains," Franks added.

Franks, who serves as the community liaison for ESOP and a volunteer instructor tasked with getting more people of color into the police department, isn't a stranger to Black Lives Matter.

During the protests in Ferguson, Franks was assaulted by the police, receiving numerous lacerations and injuries. As a candidate, as a community leader and liaison, Franks knows first-hand the importance of looking for fissures within the Department that can build unity with Black Lives Matter.

In this trying time, however, Franks urged calm within the movement.

"Roorda is intentionally trying to get the community riled-up. He wants to be able to say, 'Look at the good wholesome police. Look at what they have to deal with - these thugs and animals.' We have to be calm and tactical in our fight for change," he concluded.

"We have to build alliances - even with the police."

Photo: Photo taken during the demonstration prior to the shooting of Dallas police officers indicates that demonstrators and police can cooperate. | Twitter/DallasPD

Why we fight, or Evo 2016

Kelly Sinclair — Mon, 18 Jul 2016 14:39:00 +0000

Anger, grief, despair.

Whether you're an Iraqi parent, a French child, or an American of any ethnicity, many of you are praying "please, no more."

How is blowing up a home and the family that lived in it going to prevent survivors from repaying violence with more violence?

How does ramming celebrants with a truck in Nice express any message beyond your moral depravity?

How will killing police officers prevent some fearful badge-wearer from once again shooting a person without just cause?

Many loners in Texas in recent years have tried to commit mass murder. It took a trained military veteran with quick-fire weaponry, plus the setting of an orderly march, to finally succeed.

And now a copycat veteran walks onto the tormented cityscape of Baton Rouge and kills more cops. Asked to comment on yet another case of homeland mayhem, President Obama displayed his usual leadership and compassion.

Republican candidate Donald Trump can't be bothered to voice such sentiments. He's all about creating division and targeting the usual enemies.

In this election year, some of us are put off by Hillary Clinton because of her approval of divisive military strategies and her kowtowing to corporate interests. Green Party candidate Jill Stein and other leftist candidates beckon.

I find the prospect of supporting Hillary to be a difficult, perhaps impossible, task. Yet I also see what could happen if Trump, despites his self-sabotage, attracts enough voters to scrape together a win in November.

Trump is a divider, not a uniter. Unlike Bush II, he is constitutionally unable to include Muslim Americans in his vision for our country. Like Dick Cheney, Trump's choice of a teammate, Mike Pence, is an organization man, who if he achieves office, could provide the hard-core discipline needed to carry out Republican objectives.

I cannot predict a future President Clinton will eschew drones in favor of diplomacy, or that she will champion worker-friendly policies at home.

Her steadfast will is pocked with the paranoia bred from a generation's worth of exposure to the pitiless spotlight.

Yet she is not Donald Trump, and she alone has the best chance of keeping that man from taking office on a cold day in January.

But we are here, enduring a long, hot summer of discontent in which around the world people like us are being murdered to capture that day's headline, or death-by-cop writ large, for some obscene perversion of political purpose.

The revolution isn't being televised. Rather, we're witnessing its potential drowning at birth.

Loner force is met by organized force until surveillance threatens to go from pervasive to overtaking the last of our civil liberties.

See peaceful protestors, pummeled and cursed at Trump rallies, and then sent screaming for their lives at the march in Dallas, their freedom to dissent crumpling from the weight of our collective fears. Police there, who've recently worked at mending fences with communities of color, paid with their lives for a marksman's hubris.

Trump and his apologists want to create a permanent us versus them, and the list of "them" keeps growing.

Trump could win in November. Hillary's foes will focus relentlessly on her flaws, and his party's desire to control the tools of governance is such some will convince themselves that all Trump needs is a competent operator. Pence (and any would-be cabinet members) may not be the deciding factor in the vote, but desperate people seek out the most unlikely of saviors and off-ramps.

Weary of Southern obstruction after the Civil War, the North dumped Reconstruction. Presidents Bush and Cheney used September 11 as the pretext for permanent war and disruption in Iraq.

Statistics may provide empirical evidence that our time is not as bad as in 1968, but back then, smart phones and social media didn't exist to continually document the disorder bred when civilians and police alike feel pressured.

We witness injustice too often without a ready means of redress, and voting seems like a pointless exercise when the only two candidates remaining have little or no connection to the concerns occupying our daily lives.

So we see the news, or try not to. Perhaps we will ourselves to believe voting for the first woman president is the best we can do to further progress.

Meanwhile, in Las Vegas, Evo [Evolution] World Championships took place over the weekend. Street Fighter arcade-inspired gamers delivered avatar beat-downs with supple force. South Korean player Infiltration won this time out.

That's my idea of combat. Battled one on one in a tournament originally organized and still sustained with major contributions by people of color and played by all ethnicities. None of them angry loners, because they know how to exert their will without blood being spilled.

To give political voice to that brilliant, controlled competitiveness takes more than Trumpian comic bluster. If people power is to grow, it must be in arenas old and new, from game development to labor organization, focused actions to corporate restructure, and seizing every opportunity to frame the terms.

Progress, engagement, speaking truth to power. Trump hasn't a clue how to speak to our authentic majority. Is that enough to make me lean for Hillary?

My state is ruled by a single-party theocracy. I know I can't stop remote-controlled politicians from further fracturing my country's frail unity.

That is, I can't do it on my own. If you're for Jill Stein or another progressive candidate, be for her one hundred percent. Work your ass off. If you back Hillary, do your best to hold her to any progressive promise she makes along the way.

If progressives choose to passively experience this election it is in the sure knowledge that Trump is not simply the greater of two evils. He is the worst possible face we can show the world.

Photo: Crowd at the EVO fighting game tournament 2016.

The movement will not be criminalized

Janaé Bonsu — Mon, 18 Jul 2016 13:40:00 +0000

There is a particular impact on the psyche that the consistent exposure to the extrajudicial executions of Black bodies has, which is that it leaves me either traumatized or numb. Neither is okay. I've been trying to make sense of the implications of the past week's chain of events for the movement, particularly when it comes to criminalizing resistance.

One thing that the murders of the past week have reaffirmed is everyday community members' right to capture and share executions by police through their own mobile devices without questionable interference or tampering from police departments. In addition to Black women's survival instincts, Diamond Reynold's quick thinking to livestream the interaction in Minnesota on Facebook points to this ability. It demonstrates an understanding that if we aren't our own reporters and crusaders, no one else will be.

Beyond the public awareness factor, however, video footage of police killings and other police misconduct is not sufficient to end police violence or even ensure accountability for it. In many cases when we've had video footage - whether from body camera, dash camera, or phone - accountability hasn't followed. Think of Rodney King and Tamir Rice. Oscar Grant. Eric Garner. All resulted in not much more than subjection to triggering or traumatizing footage. In addition, the legitimacy of and rationale for investment in body cameras for police is weak at best.

Why, then, should the Department of Justice and police departments across the country spend millions of dollars to equip officers with body-worn cameras when states like North Carolina now have the sovereignty to keep body camera footage from the public in the absence of a court order? Instead of further resources going into body cameras that are more likely to reinforce surveillance than to lead to greater accountability, those investments should be going into building our communities.

Further, the fact that the murders of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile would likely not be nationally-known without smartphones, one has to wonder why cop-watching (the act of observing and documenting police misconduct and brutality) isn't the standard alternative to the futility of body cameras. But then I think about Chris LeDay, Ramsey Orta, and anyone else who has been criminalized for cop-watching and remember that the state is allergic to accountability.

When people take accountability into their own hands, the state finds a way to criminalize it. Case-in-point: "Blue Lives Matter" legislation.

The federal government quickly kicked off a wave of what's being dubbed as "Blue Lives Matter" laws back in March, and days ago with the Back the Blue Act. The former makes police officers a protected class under hate crime legislation, while both bills create specific aggravating factors for crimes against law enforcement. In an instance at a protest, for example, where sometimes police have been known to initiate aggression, those aggressions can turn into trumped up charges that might trigger enhanced penalties under either statute, if passed.

Alton Sterling was killed in Baton Rouge while selling CDs outside of a convenience store after someone placed a 911 call saying he had a gun. The graphic cell phone video that captured what ensued when police arrived incited righteous rage and protest in the people of Baton Rouge and all over the country. The risks of expressing that righteous rage is higher in Louisiana than in other states, thanks to the passage of the state's "Blue lives matter" law.

Similar legislation has also shown up in Chicago - the same city whose police department killed Rekia Boyd, Dominique "Damo" Franklin, Ronald "Ronnieman" Johnson, and Laquan McDonald, but whose people have been consistently and unapologetically refusing to be silent and demanding accountability.

If history is any prologue, the narrative that is being built on the acts of lone gunmen in Dallas and Baton Rouge that resulted in the death of eight police officers is going to be used to catapult a far-reaching strategy to criminalize the movement for Black lives' commitment to resistance and accountability. We've seen this before in the Civil Rights Movement that coincided with the War on Crime.

Fear is being spewed in order to legitimize the need to protect police and justify a surge in formalized protective measures for police officers across the county. These measures are nothing more than attempts to censor and criminalize political resistance and protests of police violence. Lawmakers aren't trying to protect officers; they're trying to suppress a movement.

But dissent is not hate. It's not police that need to be protected against hate crimes, it's Black people. Despite the police killings in Dallas and Baton Rouge, shooting deaths of police officers under the current presidential administration is significantly lower than it was under both Reagan and Bush. But violence against Black people by police? Not so much.

Alton Sterling - just like with Tanisha Anderson and countless others - lost their lives after police were called. We have no other choice than to be more vigilant than ever - not only in our resistance, but in our commitment to building an abolitionist future in our everyday lives. We have to be unyielding in our right to resist, and brave, imaginative, and bold enough to interrogate all the ways in which we don't have to rely on police; we have to increasingly rely on, love, support, and protect each other. Our lives depend on it.

Janaé Bonsu is an activist, organizer, and scholar, serving as the National Public Policy Chair of BYP100 and Next Leader at the Institute of Policy Studies. Follow her on Twitter @janaebonsu.

Photo: Riot police arrest a nurse protesting peacefully in Baton Rouge. | Max Becherer/AP

The 2016 elections are strategic for advancing racial justice

John Bachtell — Fri, 15 Jul 2016 14:41:00 +0000

This has been a gut-wrenching time. The horrific police murders of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile and the killing of five police officers in Dallas give the uneasy sense of a nation on edge. Have we entered a more hateful and polarized era? Or is real progress toward racial and social justice possible?

It is a moment full of great danger, but also great possibility. Actions in the streets, conversations around the dinner table, and especially the outcome of the 2016 elections will be decisive to which direction the nation takes.

Impact on 2016 elections

Like the Orlando massacre, the tragic events in Baton Rouge, La., Falcon Heights, Minn., and Dallas are reverberating in the 2016 elections. On cue, Donald Trump declared he would be a strong "law and order" president.

This conjures up images of the 1968 campaign of Richard Nixon who ran on a "law and order" platform. These thinly-disguised code words were aimed to appeal to whites based on fear and racism - part of the Southern Strategy. Nixon succeeded in winning a substantial section of white voters on this basis, which led to a backlash against civil rights, women's rights, and the social gains of the 1960s. It was the beginning of a broader attack on the New Deal gains. Racism was central, for instance, to the rise of the extreme right and its takeover of the GOP, the victory of Ronald Reagan in 1980, and the further repeal of social gains.

Racism has been a central thread throughout our nation's history dating to slavery. After 50 years of GOP and right-wing racism being injected into the veins of the body politic, we are confronted with the likes of Donald Trump. Racist ideas that once existed on the fringe are now being made acceptable to the mainstream. They have found some fertile ground in an era of economic dislocation and decline and the rapid demographic shifts that are unsettling millions, particularly white working people.

At moments like this, whites without anti-racist consciousness are susceptible to demagogues like Trump, easily taken in and manipulated by racist stereotypes, bigotry, and disoriented to act against their self-interests. Especially for working class whites, particularly white men, whose anger and frustration over their own bleak future is being misdirected away from their class enemy toward their black and brown class brothers and sisters.

Instead of taxing the rich, they will get more enrichment of the one percent. Instead of a living wage, they will get continued declines in real wages and greater economic insecurity.

Racism and the fight for unity

The corporate mass media paints the picture of a racially polarized nation - black vs. white. In truth, life is much more complex.

It has been well-documented, beginning with the groundbreaking Kerner Commission report on the 1967 urban rebellions, that most whites view the same developments differently than African-Americans. This perception gap stems from the different social realities blacks and whites experience due to segregation and institutionalized racism as well as the impact of racist ideas and practices.

Whites who are ignorant of what is occurring in the African-American community are especially vulnerable to racist ideas. The latest surveys indicate that nearly 40 percent of whites are sympathetic to the aims of the Black Lives Matter movement, including 50 percent of white youth. For sure, there is a core of diehard intractable racists. But there are also large swaths of whites that can be won to anti-racist positions, depending on the circumstances and issues.

Greater awareness of the reality of racism and growing empathy toward its victims is an important first step toward then taking action. The challenge is to find the points of unity, to expand and deepen this anti-racist sentiment, and to influence a majority of whites to act on the basis of morality, common humanity, and self-interest.

Only eight years ago, the first African-American was elected president on the basis of an outpouring of anti-racist majority sentiment. The victory didn't end racism, but represented a blow against it. But before President Obama stepped foot into the Oval Office, reactionary forces were plotting to obstruct and undo his presidency. Racism was then and remains now the core element of the assault.

The movement led by Black Lives Matters and its allies is influencing millions of whites. Issues and perspectives that had only been discussed on the margins among whites are discussed increasingly in the mainstream.

Videos of police killings spread on social media have profoundly impacted public consciousness. Many whites are becoming aware of a reality they knew little or nothing about. This can be likened to the impact from the images of police dogs and fire hoses unleashed on African-American demonstrators in the South or the gruesome horror of the Vietnam War brought into living rooms through television during the 1960s.

The transformative potential of today's exposure to images of police violence, protests, and the public discussion shouldn't be underestimated - even if changes aren't apparent right away. Changing consciousness is a contradictory process. It takes time to absorb lessons and re-examine old ideas and prejudices and make way for new ideas.

Majorities make change. And it will take a majority that feels compelled to act over the police killings and institutionalized racism to make change. When taken together, communities of color, the multi-racial labor movement, the young generation, and a substantial number of whites horrified by what is happening, constitute an anti-racist majority.

2016 elections victory a strategic necessity

The 2016 elections offer an extraordinary opportunity for the anti-racist majority to frame the debate and to engage millions of our fellow Americans, especially white Americans. Anti-racist whites have a special responsibility to act.

The stakes have never been higher. Defeating Trump and dislodging the GOP from its domination of Congress and state legislatures is a strategic necessity to advance racial justice. And it is integrally connected to advancing gender equity, and the rights of the LGBTQ community, immigrants, and workers, and action on climate change.

The outcome will determine what laws are passed, how they are enforced, and how the judiciary might rule on them. It will determine the nature and direction of the public discourse and the overall atmosphere in the country.

"To bring about the kind of change we need, we need to ensure that every demonstrator is a voter and that we show up en masse and in the millions," NAACP president Cornell William Brooks said on CBS's Face the Nation.

Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton present the nation with two starkly different paths. Clinton's campaign reflects a multi-racial coalition, and her administration will mirror the diversity of the American people. Clinton has addressed reforming the criminal justice system, institutionalized racism, and responded to the killings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, telling CNN:

"I will call for white people like myself to put ourselves in the shoes of those African-American families who fear every time their children go somewhere, who have to have the talk about how to really protect themselves when they're the ones that should be expecting protection from encounters with police."

A Clinton win would be a victory for racial and gender justice.

But what gains are likely under "law and order" President Trump and a GOP Congress? His daily incendiary rhetoric, calls for banning Muslims, building a wall with Mexico, his likely appointment to lead the Justice Department, and racist nominations to the US Supreme Court - all of these would ensure the fight for racial justice and any social progress will be immensely harder.

Election Day 2016 is time for the anti-racist majority, horrified by recent events, to act. It couldn't be more urgent.

Photo: A Black Lives Matter demonstrator outside the U.S. Capitol building. | AP/Evan Vucci

America at a crossroads: BLM, Dr. King, and the tasks ahead

Sam Webb — Thu, 14 Jul 2016 14:57:00 +0000

"We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there "is" such a thing as being too late. This is no time for apathy or complacency. This is a time for vigorous and positive action." - Martin Luther King Jr.

"Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, And waste its sweetness on the desert air." - Thomas Gray, "An Elegy written in a Country Churchyard"

The horrific violence last week that took the lives of two innocent African Americans, followed by the killing of five Dallas police officers, has shaken the country. Anger and frustration mix with bewilderment and feelings of powerlessness. Signs of hope are harder to find. Appeals for racial justice now compete against calls for "law and order." And the ground on which tens of millions stood a week ago, unstable as it was, has shifted and cracked in new and contradictory ways.

Whatever consensus was emerging to ameliorate the racial disparities in our criminal justice system and end the epidemic of black lives cut short by racist policing practices has been damaged under the weight of the events of last week. To what degree and for how long are questions that still don't yet have answers. And this will probably not change anytime soon, given the contingency and fluidity of the moment.

Not unexpectedly, the media jumped into the fray, providing wall-to-wall coverage. The Rupert Murdoch-owned right-wing juggernaut did all it could to polarize racial divisions and turn Black Lives Matter (BLM) into an unwelcome stranger in its own land. His New York Post screamed "Civil War" on its front page after Dallas. Not to be outdone, its crosstown cousin - FOX TV - did no better. It went to great lengths in its attempt to turn the demonstrators peacefully protesting the police killings of African Americans into the party responsible for the tragic deaths of the five Dallas officers.

As for right-wing talk radio, its venom toward BLM had no bounds. Its defense of indefensible police practices could only remind one of Hitler at the height of his oratorical powers. If the incendiary talk had a common thread, it was to heighten racial tensions to a breaking point.

Other major media outlets did better, but by no means acquitted themselves honorably. I was dumbfounded when I watched Brian Williams on MSNBC - the "liberal" network - provide an uncontested platform for Rudy Giuliani, former New York City mayor and current Trump supporter. Giuliani went on an irresponsible and demagogic rant about black-on-black crime, pointed an accusing finger at President Obama and Hillary Clinton, and labeled the Black Lives Matter movement "un-American."

That's outrageous. BLM is continuing in its own way the long and honored American and African American democratic-radical tradition. Indeed, if there is a patriot in all this it isn't Giuliani, or Trump. It's BLM.

Though it doesn't occupy the field of resistance to racist oppression and murder alone, its role - acquired by the force of its words and bodies - has been extraordinary. In insisting that a reluctant country, comfortable in the routine of its everyday life, turn its attention to what is an existential crisis facing young men of color, BLM has awakened a nation to a profound moral crisis that requires action from every one of us. And it is this that drives the coordinated right-wing media to try to de-legitimatize BLM - and in so doing, tame the entire movement to protect black lives and dull our moral compass.

Meanwhile Trump, to no surprise, was quick to appeal for "law and order," while at the same time off-loading some of the most inflammatory rhetoric to acolytes like Chris Christie and others. No doubt Trump and his advisors, well aware of their narrow pathway to the White House, see the events in Dallas, as well as the attacks in San Bernardino and Brussels, as unique opportunities to change the dynamics of the elections to their favor.

By contrast, both Obama and Clinton appealed for healing, unity, and nonviolence - without burying the just demands of the protest movement against police violence and murder. In his powerful speech in Dallas, the President implored and challenged the many audiences that comprise this country. He reminded everyone of how important it is to have someone measured and thoughtful, rather than someone given to recklessness, in the White House.

Violence is intrinsic to our unequal social order

While nearly everyone condemned the violence that has left the country on edge, few have acknowledged that state-sanctioned violence and coercion are foundational - if not singular - pillars in the formation and maintenance of inequality and exploitation. This is especially true when it comes racial inequality, oppression, and exploitation. No one should think that the police and security forces; the prisons and mass incarceration; the hangman's noose and the electric chair; "neutral" courts, laws, and sentencing practices; "wars" on crime and drugs; and repressive and deadly police practices in the ghetto and barrio (not to mention the reservation), are simply to protect law-abiding people.

Far more importantly, this far-flung, well-funded, and fully-staffed apparatus is the necessary political and material infrastructure to defend a racial and social order from the actions of subordinate classes. From people who are forced to live generation after generation in segregated, poverty-stricken, resource-starved, and drug- and gun-infested communities that cruelly deny them humanity and opportunities for a better life.

But what is also surprising in these circumstances isn't that crime or violence occurs. It is that it doesn't occur more. What's surprising is that so many people, in the face of what seem like insurmountable obstacles and oppression, are able to live in dignity and peacefully with one another. That they go to work every day, raise their children, build caring and stable families, accomplish great things in varied fields of endeavor, productively contribute to their communities and our society as a whole. All while finding hope, laughter, and courage in the best of days and the darkest of nights.

All of which goes to prove that racism not only dissolves hope, dreams, and dignity. It does more than tear apart families; incarcerate, profile, and sanction official violence; or cut short people's lives. It doesn't just reproduce grinding poverty in hyper-segregated communities. Racism - and more to the point, resistance to racism - also begets courage and wisdom. Resistance brings people together, inspires freedom songs and dreams. It turns people of color into a powerful and prophetic voice, a material force for democracy, equality, and peace, and makes them leaders for anti-racist progressive and radical change.

King's legacy and the tasks of today

At a moment like this, I find it useful to return to the life and legacy of Martin Luther King. He taught that racism was neither natural nor eternal. He considered it a debilitating, dehumanizing, and deadly system of oppression and exploitation. At the center of King's moral vision was nonviolence and nonviolent mass action. As a philosophy and practice, he considered it the best way to speak truth to power and change the hearts (and values) of the inactive and indifferent. It was the way to throw the perpetrators of violence on the defensive. Nonviolence for King stood moral witness for the sacredness of life in a world quick to devalue lives - especially the lives of people of color and the poor.

Freedom-seekers who resorted to violence, he believed, narrowed down popular support for their cause. Violence shifted advantage to those who upheld racism, and dehumanized its practitioners no matter how just and righteous their demands.

At the core of nonviolent mass action was the building of majoritarian, multi-racial movements to eradicate racism, poverty, and war - King's triplets of destruction and death. King knew such movements, especially those that count in the millions, are seldom of one mind. Invariably, they include people of diverse backgrounds and experiences. They bring different orientations on matters of analysis, strategy, and tactics. Nevertheless, he resisted the pressures - and they were considerable - to narrow down the movement to only those fully on board and ready to embrace the most militant forms of action.

While King never abandoned the focus on ameliorating the worst features of racist oppression, it wasn't the only ground he occupied. In a speech at Riverside Church in New York in 1967, King said:

"[W]e are called to play the Good Samaritan on life's roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice, which produces beggars, needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth."

King here is bringing attention to the structural and institutional - the material and systemic - sources of racial oppression in its myriad forms, much like BLM is doing today. That didn't diminish the urgency to struggle for immediate and partial reform measures for him, but it kept in sight that the overriding imperative is to dismantle the whole "edifice" of oppression and transform "the whole Jericho road."

If he were alive today, it is fair to assume that he would deplore the violence, appeal for understanding and multi-racial unity, extend a welcoming hand to the labor movement, and join the marchers protesting the latest racist killings. He would also be the first to defend BLM and other protesters. He would remind the American people, and white people in particular, that what happened last week, including the deaths of the Dallas policemen, can't be separated from the whole edifice of racism and segregation. He would tell them that until that edifice is torn down - and the time for doing so is NOW - our country will face difficult trials.

Finally, King would use this moment to urge people of good will to play their part in the effort to defeat Trump and the rest of the Republicans up and down the ticket. He would tell them to do it in a landslide like the presidential election of 1964, when Lyndon Johnson trounced Barry Goldwater.

King, unlike some on the left today, didn't stand aloof from politics or the Democratic Party. Indeed, he understood that his freedom dreams and beloved community stood little chance of becoming a reality if the main levers of political power were in the hands of right-wing extremists. In his time, that meant Goldwater. In ours, it means Trump and the many others who infest our legislative and judicial bodies at the federal and state levels. The notion of disengaging from electoral and legislative work in the name of some abstract political principle was anathema to him.

Even when the Democratic Party was filled with Dixiecrats, whose record of obstruction, nullification, and resistance to the freedom demands of the Civil Rights Movement was a matter of record, King didn't yield to the idea that political action was a fool's errand. Especially not when the future of our country, democracy, equality, democratic rights, peace, and a sustainable planet could well hang in the balance, just as they did in 1964. My guess is that he would express a similar position today.

This article originally appeared at the author's blog, SamWebb.org.

Photo: Dr. Martin Luther King and others march in Selma, Alabama in 1965 | History.com

After the recent horror, there are still two Americas

Jesse Jackson — Thu, 14 Jul 2016 13:18:00 +0000

"It is more dangerous to be black in America. You're substantially more likely to be in a situation where police don't respect you."

The speaker was not Barack Obama; it was former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich. Even a conservative firebrand like Gingrich was shaken by videos showing black men killed by police in Baton Rouge and suburban St. Paul.

Then the lone assassin in Dallas shot and killed five police officers and wounded seven more. Grief, fear, and anger spread.

The challenge now - for every concerned American - is how we react to the injustice and the violence. We know that our justice system suffers from massive and systematic racism. It is more dangerous to drive while black. African-Americans are more likely to be stopped, more likely to be searched, more likely to be arrested if stopped, more likely to be charged if arrested, and more likely to be jailed if convicted. The budget of many small towns is based upon the fines, penalties and fees largely paid for by African-American offenders. Police, state's attorneys, and judges tend to have a shared perspective, an organizational kinship.

How do we respond? After the shootings of Philando Castile in Minneapolis and Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge - as after Ferguson, Mo. and Baltimore and more - nonviolent demonstrations spread across the country. Whites joined with blacks and Latinos and Asian-Americans to call for an end to the killings, for justice, for the recognition that Black Lives Matter. These are the tactics taught by Jesus, Gandhi, and Dr. Martin Luther King, not because they were scared of violence but because they were wise about change. Nonviolence condemns the sin, but not the sinner. It indicts the injustice by forcing recognition of our shared humanity. It summons the better angels of our character, not the bitter angers of our fears.

We must choose reconciliation over retaliation and revenge. This is a teachable moment if we are finally willing to learn that too many guns, too much injustice, and growing disparities is a lethal cocktail.

It is unfair to associate the terrorist attack in Dallas with our long struggle for peace and justice for all. This crime has endangered those who would protest nonviolently against injustice. It roused fears and spread hatred. The reactionary will use the shooter's crimes to try to discredit the reform movement. Police across the country will be even more on guard. Violence isn't an answer; it is sabotage.

America is scarred by what has become routine violence. There is good news, though. The murder rate is dropping. The number of police killed in the line of duty is lower in recent years than it was in earlier decades. But according to the tally of the Washington Post, 509 people have been shot by police to date in 2016, a pace similar to last year's. (Editor's Note: The tally at Washington Post has risen to 518 since this article was written.) And gun violence continues to take a grisly toll.

The cameras that now are everywhere have begun to expose to America the reality that people of color have known all too well. Now people of good conscience must come together and demand change. This will take multiracial coalitions, electoral mobilization, and peaceful protest.

But the camera's eye shows us only a glimpse of the symptoms; it does not reveal the roots of the disease. The camera lens can reveal the police abuse, breaking the curtain of silence. But it does not show the roots of the problem.

The reality is that there are still two Americas. We've overcome legal racial segregation, but we haven't overcome legal resource segregation in schools, jobs, contracts, investments, access to capital, technology, and deal flow. Poor African-Americans and Latinos are more likely to be crowded into impoverished neighborhoods marked by drugs and guns, by violent streets and broken schools, unemployment, and crushed hopes. Police are tasked to keep order amid the despair. It is an impossible job.

Yes, we need justice when police officers brutalize the innocent. We need more training, more cameras, more community relations, and new community forms of policing. We need to end the racial disparities in arrests, searches, sentencing, and more.

But the police will still be in an impossible position unless we get serious about making this one America, in redressing the lack of jobs, the broken schools, the shortage of affordable housing, the lack of health care and drug treatment, the shortage of parks and recreational facilities. That is why we need a White House conference on the two Americas, on racial disparity, poverty, and reconstruction. We need a plan for jobs, for rebuilding our impoverished neighborhoods, for replacing guns with books and drugs with hope. Without that, the camera lens will continue to reveal that the horrors and the crimes are continuing, and the spiral of hate and fear deepening.

This article originally appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times. It is reprinted here with the permission of Rainbow PUSH.

Photo: Police officers watch protesters gathering against another group of protesters in Baton Rouge, La., Sunday, July 10, 2016. | AP/Scott Clause

Baton Rouge, Falcon Heights, Dallas: How far have we really come?

Linda Burnham — Thu, 14 Jul 2016 10:40:00 +0000

A thick strand in the history of U.S. policing is rooted back in the slave patrols of the 19^th century. "Patty rollers" were authorized to stop, question, search, harass, and summarily punish any Black person they encountered. The five- and six-pointed badges many of them wore to symbolize their authority were predecessors to those of today's sheriffs and patrolmen. They regularly entered the plantation living quarters of enslaved people, leaving terror and grief in their wake. Together with the hunters of runaways, these patrols had a crystal clear mandate: to constrain the enslaved population to its role as the embodiment and producer of massive wealth for whites and to forestall the possibility that labor subordinated to the lash might rebel at the cost of white lives.

How far have we come, really? Having extricated ourselves from a system of bottomless and blatant cruelty we have evolved a system that depends on the patty rollers of today to constrain and contain a population that, while no longer enslaved, is ruthlessly exploited, criminally neglected, and justifiably aggrieved. Ruthlessly exploited by the low-wage industries that depend on ample supplies of cheap labor, by the bottom feeders of capital - pay-day loan companies and slumlords come to mind - by the incarceration-for-profit industry, by the municipalities that meet their budgets by preying on poor people, generating revenue by way of broken taillights, lapsed vehicle registrations, and failures to signal.

Criminally neglected by policymakers - 152 years' worth and counting - at every level of government. And so our education policy appears to be: starve the public system until it collapses and to hell with the children whose parents have no alternative. Housing policy stubbornly stacked against the development and maintenance of low-income housing. Jobs policy that, against an ideological backdrop that touts personal fulfillment and prosperity through honest effort, reduces grown men to selling loosies and CDs on street corners to provide for their families.

Justifiably aggrieved because we still must assert, against the relentless accumulation of evidence to the contrary, that Black lives matter.

And all this on top of the foundational failure to financially repair or compensate the formerly enslaved or their descendants.

So today's patty rollers are expected to contain any overflow of bitterness and anger on the part of the exploited, neglected and aggrieved, maintaining order in a fundamentally - and racially - disordered system. Their mandate is as clear as that of their forefathers: to constrain a population whose designated role is to absorb absurdly high rates of unemployment and make itself available for low-wage, low-status work without complaint, much less rebellion. Those who fear a spiraling descent into disorder, know this: we are merely witnessing the periodic, explosive surfacing of entrenched disorders we have refused to face or fix.

Our narratives and debates about good cops and rogue cops, better training and community policing are important but entirely insufficient. No doubt the patty rollers of the 1850s could have been trained to reign in their brutality. Given the gloriously diverse dispositions of our human family, patrollers likely ranged from the breathtakingly cruel to the queasily reluctant enforcers of patent injustice. All that is, at bottom, beside the point. Whether cruel or kind, restrained or rogue, their job was to police - and by policing, maintain - a barbaric system.

Today's police can be better trained to recognize implicit bias, to dial back on aggression, and deescalate tense encounters. All to the good, as far as it goes. But none of it changes their core mandate in poor Black communities: to control and contain, by any means necessary, a population that has every reason to be restive and rebellious.

"Was he colored?"

"Was he colored?" That's what my grandmother would say whenever she heard news about a criminal act. She knew that if the alleged perpetrator were "colored" his criminality would be read not simply as the act of an individual, but as an expression of an ingrained racial tendency. Somehow being Black meant that the actions of every random thief, rapist, or murderer who was also Black redounded to you and your people. I imagine most Black families had a version of "Was he colored?" And I wouldn't be surprised if Muslim American families have an equivalent expression today. Untying the knot of individual culpability and the consequences of racial belonging is nowhere near as straightforward as it might seem.

I was on a dance floor on Thursday night, desperately trying to shake off the news from Baton Rouge and Falcon Heights. My phone was in my back pocket and, like an idiot, when it buzzed with an incoming text, I left the dance floor and stepped outside to the news from Dallas. Though the action was still unfolding, I immediately surmised that the shooter was "colored," and that he had been trained by the U.S. military.

It has fallen to President Obama, time and again, to make sense out of the incomprehensible and bind the wounds of a nation apparently bent on self-destruction. In the aftermath of Dallas, Obama quickly condemned the despicable violence of a demented, troubled individual. The president's intent was clear and laudable. He sought to defuse tensions by definitively asserting that the shooter's action was not associated with a political movement or a particular organization, that his murderous deeds should in no way be linked to African Americans in general. He struggled to shift the focus from "Was he colored?" to "Clearly he was crazy, right?"

But before boxing Micah Johnson up and setting him aside as deranged and demented, it's worth asking a few questions. Honestly, good people, did anybody in their right mind - that is, not troubled or demented - think that the police could continue to pick off Black people at will and on camera without producing a Micah Johnson? And is troubled and demented shorthand for "traumatized by repeated exposure to the graphic depiction of the murder of people who look just like me?" Or for "agonized by the fact that the officers of the law who placed a handcuffed man in the back of a van and snapped his spine in an intentionally 'rough ride' were neither held criminally accountable nor labeled troubled and demented?" Or for "depressed beyond imagining and haunted by the ghosts of the men and women whose lives were snatched by the side of the road, down back alleyways, and in precinct stations from one end of the country to the other before the era of cell phone video?" Or for "pierced through the heart by the voice of four-year-old Dae'Anna, comforting her mama?" Because if demented and troubled is shorthand for any of that, then Micah Johnson may have been a lone gunman, but he is far from alone.

That whoosh you heard on Friday morning was the sound of people rushing to condemn the Dallas shootings, or to extract condemnations from others. There is, of course, no moral justification for gunning down police officers. And, retaliatory violence aimed at the armed representatives of the state, beyond being a suicidal provocation, also shuts down all avenues for advancing the cause of racial justice. But there is a lot of room for reflection between the cheap polarities of condemn or condone.

So here we are, once again, with calls from all quarters for dialogue across the racial divide. But if the long years before the emergence of the various movements for Black lives have taught us anything, it is this: our purported partners in dialogue simply turn their backs and leave the table as soon as the pressure is off. This moment calls for the vigorous defense of our right to continued protest and the intensification and elaboration of multiple movements for Black lives - for the sake of our ancestors and the generations to come. And for the sake of this country that is our home.

Linda Burnham is research director at the National Domestic Workers Alliance

Photo: Alton Sterling's son, Cameron, is comforted at a vigil in Baton Rouge on July 6. | AP/Gerald Herbert

The legacy of Henry Wallace and the 1948 Progressive Party

David Cavendish — Wed, 13 Jul 2016 14:17:00 +0000

When the Democratic Party convenes in Philadelphia on July 25, it will be meeting in a city known not only for its pivotal role in the founding of this country, but also for its long tradition of political conventions. Nine times previously political parties have held their nominating meetings in the city. None was more meaningful for today, though, than that of the Progressive Party in 1948.

The Progressive Party arose out of increasing opposition to the growing tensions of the Cold War. Many people felt betrayed that peaceful relations between the United States and the Soviet Union, which Franklin D. Roosevelt worked so hard to achieve, had deteriorated badly in such a short time. President Harry S. Truman was the public face of those forces, including the nascent military-industrial complex and the racists and segregationists who dominated the Democratic Party - those who sought to blunt the will of the people. The twin evils of militarism (rationalized by a so-called "communist threat") and racism dominated the political discourse.

Truman had instituted "loyalty oaths," and the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) had held hearings designed to uncover "subversives" in various areas of American life. The best-known were those of the "Hollywood Ten" - prominent screenwriters and directors who were denied work because of "pro-communist" sympathies.

With the so-called Truman Doctrine, the United States declared its foreign policy aim was to "contain communism." Some, like radical-turned-conservative James Burnham, even wanted to go further and favored "rolling it back." The budget of the newly-created Defense Department, which (under its predecessor, the War Department) had been $1.9 billion in 1939, jumped to $52 billion in 1947, then nearly doubled the next year to over $100 billion. It would grow by an additional 40 percent in 1949.

Opposing the emerging Cold War

Many Americans were not buying these goods. After the hostilities of World War II concluded in 1945, there had been a general desire to build real world peace and to carry on the ideals of the New Deal begun by President Roosevelt. A diverse group that included labor unions, particularly those in the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), women, youth, people of color, and intellectuals sought to short-circuit the dangerous trends in our society.

Henry A. Wallace, a former vice-president of the United States and Cabinet member, assumed the leadership of this movement. Because the political conditions of the emerging Cold War in 1948 barred any meaningful role for him in either of the two major parties, Wallace and his supporters decided to build an independent movement. Thus, the Progressive Party was born.

Its members convened in Philadelphia the third week of July for a meeting like few others in American history. One scholar called it "an astonishing affair by all accounts." Most of the delegates were "plain people with little practical political experience." Howard Smith, writing in The Nation that summer, reported that there were "hundreds who hitch-hiked" to get there, with many of them staying in tents in the convention hall parking lot.

The delegates nominated Wallace for president and adopted a platform that offered a different political agenda for the country. In areas of economics, social justice, human rights, and peace it laid down principles that went directly counter to the emerging Cold War under Truman.

A platform for peace and justice

In the preamble to its platform, the party warned that the "American way of life is in danger." The root cause of this crisis, it argued, "is Big Business control of our economy and Government." In words eerily similar to the present, it noted that, "Never before have so few owned so much at the expense of so many." As such, "The Progressive Party is born in the deep conviction that the national wealth and natural resources of our country belong to the people who inhabit it and must be employed in their behalf; that freedom and opportunity must be secured equally to all; that the brotherhood of man can be achieved and scourge of war ended."

The Progressives wanted a government that acted in the interests of the common people and which believed "it is the first duty of a just government to secure for all the people, regardless of race, creed, color, sex, national background, political belief, or station in life, the inalienable rights proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence and guaranteed by the Bill of Rights." They thought the government "must actively protect these rights against the encroachments of public and private agencies." Their platform demanded an end to discrimination "in all its forms and in all places." And that was not to be only a symbolic gesture, but something that would be achieved through "special programs to raise the low standards of health, housing, and educational facilities" for African-Americans, Native Americans, and all people.

Hand-in-hand with the struggle for social justice and human rights, the Progressives acknowledged that the labor movement "remains the mainspring of America's democratic striving, and must be given every opportunity to continue the struggle" so that "every American who works for a living has an inalienable right to an income sufficient to provide him and his family with a high standard of living." This included the "extension of social security protection to every man, woman, and child in the United States." The Platform went on to say that, "Unless the rights of labor to organize, to bargain collectively, and to strike are secure, a rising standard of living cannot be realized."

In the area of foreign affairs, the Progressive Party proclaimed that "only through peaceful understanding can the world make progress toward...higher standards of living; that peace is the essential condition for safe-guarding and extending our traditional freedoms." The platform underscored that view by declaring "we believe that people everywhere in the world have the right to self-determination," and that the people of Puerto Rico "have the right to independence."

Reaction killed the Progressive dream

After the convention adjourned, activists spread out across the country. They received much enthusiasm and solid support during the campaign. Early polls gave Wallace 20 percent of the vote. But over the next few months, Wallace fell victim to the rising "anti-communist" crusade that affected every corner of progressive people's lives. Smeared as a "tool" of the Communist Party, by election day his support almost completely melted away. In the end, he received only 1.1 million votes (less than 2 1/2 percent of all ballots cast). He carried no states.

In the years that followed, the progressive movement confronted a massive onslaught of persecution, prosecution, and repression. Joseph McCarthy, an obscure Republican Senator from Wisconsin, came to dominate the public arena with unfounded charges that led to a crippling of the progressive movement. It would take years for it to recover, and in some ways we still live with that legacy. Even Henry Wallace would move to the political center by the 1950s.

Many of the goals of the Progressive Party, therefore, remain unfilled to this day. Rising anger against the decline in working class living standards has reached its greatest level in the 2016 election. Progressives, such as the Bernie Sanders delegates to the Democratic National Convention, need to continue the fight against economic inequality, racial injustice, political corruption, and climate change. If successful, they might just bring to fruition the work of the Progressive Party in Philadelphia nearly seventy years ago.

Photo: A billboard for the Progressive Party's 1948 candidate for president, Henry A. Wallace. | University of Iowa Library