Campaigning for Democracy And Socialism |
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April 26, 2024: The Week in Review
Youth in Revolt While the High Court Dithers
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Some of us can remember a relatively liberal U.S. Supreme Court, an institution often under fire from a far right that wanted its powers gutted.
We could recall the Warren Court of 1955 and the Brown decision, an initial enabling act to overthrow decades of segregation in the South and elsewhere in the country. Those of us just entering politics in the 1960s took note of several high court decisions that reversed some verdicts of the Smith Act and the McCarran Act, both of which had fueled the anti-communist and anti-left tirades of Senator Joe McCarthy and the FBI's J. Edgar Hoover.
Today we have a different view at hand. The current Supreme Court hearings regarding 'immunity' from prosecutions of crimes committed by a president, both in office and afterward, should serve as a correction to our earlier one-sidedness. Bizarrely, we have a Court today seriously discussing whether a president can assert immunity even if he took paramilitary action to assassinate his political opponents among U.S. citizens. As several legal commentators have pointed out, given that kind of immunity, you have a King, not a President. Granted such immunity, why stop there? Such an elected tyrant could assassinate the entire high court, and replace Congress as well.
What's also bizarre is the Justices, or five of them anyway, have no need to wander off into never-never land debating hypothetical dilemmas. Right in front of their noses are the very current matters of a president organizing the Jan. 6 insurrection to stop Biden's inauguration, or pleading with a Georgia official to stuff ballot boxes with 12,000 'found' votes, or stuffing a truckload of U.S. secret documents into his Florida basement, to sell, blackmail or do whatever else he might do with them. Moreover, he ignored requests for their return, attempting to hide them, under the FBI finally raided the place to reclaim them for proper government storage.
We don't even have to stop here, as we see Trump's current trial in Manhattan and its violation of election laws. So why are these five Justices acting this way? We can note that three of the five were added to the court by Trump, hand-picked from a list compiled by the far-right Federalist Society. When added to the two long-standing reactionaries, Justices Thomas and Alito, we have, at least, a Trump-leaning court.
There's more to it, and it gets rather slimy. In their speculations, all The Five have to do is divert and waste time. As the number of weeks before the fall election decrease, they can argue that the decisions be put off until after it's over. If Trump loses, the matter is more or less moot. If he wins, he can make undue use of his pardon powers and dismiss all the cases, plus free all of his convicted 'political prisoners.' In short, the Five can get to decide by not deciding.
But we would do well to take a deeper look. To be sure, the current court was shaped by one man, Mitch McConnell, who unconstitutionally disallowed President Obama from making his high court pick, then quickly dropped those 'rules' so Trump could pick three. Where we need to get a firmer grip is the that Supreme Court was never a 'neutral' body above the fray to be easily tilted one way or another. We need to note it's long-standing restrictions on the franchise, formed around the social construction of a 'white race' at the outset, then reinforced by the Dred Scott Decision, asserting that 'the black race' had no rights that whites were bound to respect.
It took a Civil War to overturn Dred Scott. And it took another 'war after the war' to overthrow the brief rise of an interracial workers' democracy arising in the Black Reconstruction spanning ten states. The Hayes-Tilden deal was arranged behind closed doors that none of our courts bothered to open. To make sure the 'white redeemers' kept their power, the high court ruled for 'separate but equal' in 1898's 'Plessy vs. Ferguson,' which, as we know, allowed separation but not equality in real life.
During and after World War One, the court backed up all the reactionary anti-immigrant and anti-left legislation used to break up the Socialist Party. Debs remained in jail until pardoned by President Harding. The court opposed most of FDR's New Deal legislation, until he threatened to add five new members to it. Then he got the one vote needed for his 5-4 majority. But Congress soon produced the Smith Act and the McCarran Act to go after the left, labor and civil rights movements once again, putting more than a hundred SWP and CPUSA members on trial, and many of those in prison.
Powerful mass struggles and good lawyers helped defeat many of these outrages. But many are still on the books. And the 'COINTELPRO' war against the Black Panthers, including police death squads, revealed how authorities could act even without legal cover.
Even with our few victories, we would not like to repeat many of these episodes. In the short run, we have one pending way to thwart the ambitions of the current Five. Whatever they decide, or decide by indecision, we can turn out voters in massive numbers, especially in the critical battleground states, to defeat the Orange Menace decisively, once and for all, then make sure the votes are counted properly. The results must be secured, and Democrats sworn in from the Oval Office on down. This is far from any promised land, but it's far better terrain to expand the Squad and work toward a government of a Third Reconstruction.
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Please send us your letters, comments, queries, complaints, new ideas. Just keep them short and civil. Longer commentaries and be submitted as articles.
DIFFICULTY READING US?
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We're going to try something new, and you are all invited.
Saturday Morning Coffee!
Started in August 2022, then going forward every week.
It will be more of a hangout than a formal setting. We can review the news in the previous days' LeftLinks or add a new topic. We can invite guests or carry on with those who show up. We'll try to have a progressive stack keeper should we need one.
Most of all, we will try to be interesting and a good sounding board. If you have a point you would like to make or a guest to invite, send an email to Carl Davidson, carld717@gmail.com
Continuing weekly, 10:30 to Noon, EDT.
The Zoom link will also be available on our Facebook Page.
Meeting ID: 868 9706 5843
Let's see what happens!
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The Return of John Brown:
Abolitionist Comes Back
to Life in New Musical
The first show will debut on April 26 in Baltimore, followed by a show on April 27 in Washington, DC. The next weekend on May 4 and 5, the play will be featured at the Kennedy Farm, the Harpers Ferry location where John Brown staged his famous anti-slavery raid.
Director: Jayne LaMondue Price
Musical Director: Glenn Pearson
For more information email Returnofjohnbrown@gmail.com.
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April 28, May 5,
May 19, & June 2
4-6:30pm eastern
1-3:30pm pacific
Suggested registration fee: $80-$330 any amount accepted
NO ONE WILL BE TURNED AWAY FOR LACK OF FUNDS
*Sessions will be recorded. Live attendance is not mandatory.*
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Talking Strategy, Making History
A podcast to help us learn from the past to organize the future
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A CONVERGENCE SYLLABUS
The strategy elaborated in this syllabus is aims to block MAGA’s bid for power and while doing so build enough independent progressive clout to start the country down the road to a robust multiracial, gender-inclusive democracy and an economy that works for all on an environmentally sustainable planet.
Convergence added a special session to this study to help participants grapple with the dramatic impact the Gaza crisis has had on US politics.
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An Iranian Woman Finds Her Might
The Smallest Power
The New Yorker Documentary
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This featured story are reflections by labor and community activist Jeff Crosby, son of Harry Crosby, a prominent character in the Apple TV series “Masters of the Air.” The series depicts the courage of young men who risked, and often sacrificed, their lives to defeat fascism during World War II. The non-profit group Greater Lynn Senior Services (GLSS) interviewed Jeff about his father and his experience with the making of the series.
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Copy your Cinco de Mayo Posters! |
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Last Week's Saturday Morning Coffee
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News of the Week, Plus More
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Photo: During testimony in front of a congressional committee this week, Dr. Shafik said Columbia had taken numerous steps to restrict protests that some had seen as antisemitic.Credit...Anna Rose Layden for The New York Times
The Gaza Crisis: Self-Destructive College Presidents
They are making a fraught situation worse by letting the far right define antisemitism and the necessary campus responses.
By Robert Kuttner
The American Prospect
Last December, the presidents of Penn and Harvard did not grovel sufficiently in trying to appease Republican inquisitors claiming that they were insufficiently sensitive to episodes of antisemitism. So with some crude prodding from large donors of the “Israel right or wrong” camp, Liz Magill and Claudine Gay were pushed out of their jobs by panicked trustees.
In the latest round of this self-abasement, other college presidents are hoping to out-grovel the earlier batch and outdo each other in sacrificing civil liberties. This never ends well.
At last week’s hearing before the same House Education subcommittee that destroyed Magill and Gay, Columbia’s beleaguered president, Nemat “Minouche” Shafik, who was born in Egypt, brought with her three senior Jewish colleagues for the grovel-fest. At one point, Rep. Rick Allen, a Republican from Georgia, asked Shafik whether she knew Genesis 12:3. She didn’t.
Allen explained: “It was the covenant that God made with Abraham, and that covenant was real clear: ‘If you bless Israel I will bless you, if you curse Israel I will curse you,’” he said. “Do you want Columbia University to be cursed by God?” Allen demanded.
Shafik meekly responded, “Definitely not.” Seriously? The right answer was “Congressman, we can discuss the difficult balance between unpopular, even outrageous views and civil liberties. But I am not here to be interrogated by you about the Bible.”
Somewhere there is a courageous college president, but she was not in that hearing room. All too predictably, on Sunday Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), who began the inquisitions of college presidents, called for Shafik’s resignation, in favor of someone “who will protect Jewish students and enforce school policies.” God save us from these friends of the Jews.
In Boston, students at MIT, Emerson, and Tufts have set up encampments in solidarity with students at Columbia. At Yale, where a Jewish student was injured by a protester, police have made arrests at a pro-Palestinian encampment. Instead of debating Israel-Palestine policy or the complex dynamics of antisemitism, the denial of civil liberties has become the issue.
Meanwhile, back at Columbia, where Shafik invited police onto campus last week to clear an encampment of pro-Palestinian demonstrators, the university suspended upwards of a hundred Columbia and Barnard students who supported the non-student demonstrators. And early Monday morning, trying to contain the damage, Shafik suspended all in-person classes in favor of virtual ones.
This will only escalate further and lead to more civil disobedience, more disgraceful denial of free speech, and more loss of confidence in Shafik by all sides. And count on opportunists to fish in troubled waters.
Rabbi Elie Buechler, a rabbi at Columbia, sent a message to 300 Jewish students suggesting they leave campus for their own safety and not come back. The Hillel organization for Columbia and Barnard rejected that advice in an X post.
And Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) announced Sunday that he would support Jewish students. “I will be coming to Columbia University to walk with the Jewish students. If the University won’t protect them, Congress will!” Moskowitz posted on X. He will be joined by Reps. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) and Dan Goldman (D-NY).
One brave exception was Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY), who joined six Columbia professors at a virtual press conference Friday. “I’m very concerned with some of Columbia’s actions,” Bowman said. “They seem to be folding to pressure from a right wing Congress’ weaponizing of the unfolding events in the Middle East as a means to suppress fundamental freedoms of expression.” Bowman is doubly courageous because he is in a primary fight against AIPAC-backed Westchester County Executive George Latimer.
Granted, some incidents at Columbia and elsewhere have moved well beyond speech to explicit threats against Jewish students and even isolated instances of physical harm. It’s hard in these circumstances to find the right balance between defending campus free speech and not tolerating intimidation. But Shafik’s ultra hard line is not the right balance.
Meanwhile at USC, the university president, Carol Folt, has outdone even Columbia’s Shafik, in sacrificing civil liberty to appeasement. Folt, whose salary is $3.9 million, first canceled the customary commencement speech by the valedictorian Asna Tabassum following complaints by pro-Israel groups. The university cravenly cited “security concerns.”
Then, Folt, in full panic mode, shut down other commencement events, including honorary-degree awards and speeches by film director Jon Chu, tennis great Billie Jean King, and others.
USC students and faculty should emulate the great African American contralto Marian Anderson, who gave a free concert at the Lincoln Memorial in 1939 after being barred from the racist DAR’s Constitution Hall. They should hold their own counter-event off-site, inviting all of the disinvited speakers. The withdrawn invitations could be treated as badges of honor.
It doesn’t take a crystal ball to discern that events on these campuses will soon escalate, that these gutless presidents will please no one, and that they will likely lose their jobs, leaving in their wake a festering election-year mess to be further stoked and exploited by the Republican right and Bibi Netanyahu.
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Photo: Tents go up at University of Michigan.
Student Occupations for Gaza Ceasefire
and Defense of Palestinians Sweeps the Country
A single spark can start a prairie fire.
By Rod Such
Special to LeftLinks
When Columbia University’s administration called in New York City police on April 18 to break up a student-organized Palestine solidarity encampment on campus, resulting in the arrests and suspensions of 108 protestors, a wave of student encampments spread across the country, and hundreds of more arrests followed.
As of April 25, encampments consisting of students setting up tents on campus lawns or occupying university buildings, were reported at dozens of elite universities such as the University of Southern California in Los Angeles; Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge; the University of California at Berkeley and at Los Angeles; Rice University in Houston, Tex.; Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill.; Princeton University in New Jersey; New York University in Manhattan; Yale University in New Haven, Conn.; Brown University in Providence, R.I.; George Washington University in D.C.; and Cornel University in Ithaca, N.Y.
Virtually every so-called Ivy League university saw encampments or protests.
Encampments were also reported at respected liberal arts schools such as Emory University in Atlanta, Ga; Washington University in St. Louis, Mo.; Tufts University in Medford, Mass.. Swarthmore College in Swarthmore, Pa.; the New School in New York City, and Emerson College in Boston.
Students at publicly-run universities also joined the encampment wave at the University of Texas at Austin; California State Polytechnic University in Humboldt; the University of Minnesota in the Twin Cities; Ohio State University in Columbus; Florida State University in Tallahassee; City College of New York; Michigan State University in East Lansing; the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor; the University of Delaware in Newark; the University of North Carolina at both Charlotte and Chapel Hill; Indiana University in Bloomington; the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania; and City College of New York in Manhattan.
In addition to the encampments, there were also protests at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind.; the University of Southern Maine in Portland; University of Texas in Arlington, in Dallas, and in San Antonio; University of New Mexico in Albuquerque; the University of Maryland in College Park; and the University of Florida in Gainesville.
In all, the protests spread to nearly half of the states in the country.
Repression met many of the protests, and by April 25, more than 400 arrests had been reported, along with disciplinary actions that threatened students’ education, their housing, and safety. Police used tear gas or pepper spray at Emory University. The encampment at the University of Texas at Austin, where 57 people were arrested. was met by state police in riot gear with some on horseback. The University of Southern California saw 93 arrests.
At the epicenter of the protests, the Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson went to the Columbia University campus and called for the National Guard to be brought out, which eerily recalled the murders of four people, including three students, at Kent State University in Ohio by National Guard troops in 1970 during Vietnam War protests. No one was ever indicted or punished for those murders.
Ironically, Johnson called for the resignation of Columbia’s president Minouche Shafik even though she ordered the arrests of the students and despite her disgraceful appearance before a House committee allegedly investigating antisemitism on campuses. A more accurate description of the hearing would be a McCarthyite witchhunt against student and faculty support for Palestinian liberation.
Columbia’s administration had previously set the tone for the crackdown, beginning as early as November 2023, shortly after Israel began its genocidal retaliation against the people of Gaza in response to the Oct. 7 Hamas attack in southern Israel. At that time the university suspended the chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace for organizing “unauthorized events.”
The unauthorized event was a talk by the Palestinian poet and writer Mohammed el-Kurd, a correspondent for The Nation magazine. The university also canceled an event that month featuring a talk by Omar Shakir, a director at Human Rights Watch and the principal author of a report concluding that Israel is an apartheid state.
Part of the rationale for the suspension was that the events were creating an unsafe environment for Jewish students, although Jewish students were among the organizers. Columbia’s administrators never acknowledged the irony of banning a Jewish-led student organization in the name of fighting antisemitism.
Then In March 2024 Columbia announced the suspension of several students for holding an “unauthorized” event that featured Palestinian writer Khaled Barakat, even informing law enforcement of the event due to Barakat’s alleged ties to the Marxist-led Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, an affiliation that Barakat denied. The students received a notice that they were being evicted from campus housing.
Many students at Columbia believe the repressive measures directed at them are related to a campus divestment campaign aimed at forcing the university to divest its portfolio from companies that profit from Israeli apartheid and/or furnish weapons to the Israeli military as it carries out a genocide against Palestinians.
Some expressed the belief that the recent suspensions were choreographed to ease the way for Shafik’s appearance on April 17 before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce in a hearing titled “Columbia in Crisis: Columbia University’s Response to Antisemitism.” During the hearing Shafik was grilled by Republican member Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York who regurgitated already debunked claims of beheaded babies during the Hamas attack. Shafik not only failed to call out the falsity of the claims, but also violated the privacy and due process rights of faculty members by disclosing that they were under investigation for alleged violations.
One of those named was Dr. Joseph Mossad, a Palestinian and a professor of Middle East Studies, who has been receiving death threats since the October attack. Another was law professor Katherine Franke and a Jewish adjunct professor Albert Bininachvili. As a result of her performance before the committee, Shafik now faces censure by the university senate.
Both students and faculty at Columbia have risen to the occasion since the initial crackdown on April 17. The suspended students were replaced by another group who resumed the encampment. This time hundreds of faculty turned out in support.
The labor movement has also joined in solidarity. Twenty-eight unions, representing tens of thousands of workers, issued a statement on X, formerly Twitter, demanding “the immediate reinstatement of all students and student workers disciplined for pro-Palestine protests and the end to the repression of protest on Columbia’s campus.”
Columbia, of course, is a symbol of popular protest, dating to 1968 when students occupied university buildings to oppose the university’s complicity in the Vietnam War and its planned expansion into neighboring Morningside Park, which was part of the university’s gentrifying foray into Harlem, The resulting bloody crackdown then by New York City police likewise galvanized the budding antiwar movement throughout the United States.
Some things never change. Universities remain arms of the military-industrial complex, churning out research on behalf of weapons manufacturers and maintaining ties to the whole panoply of imperialist domination. Far from being bastions of academic freedom, they continue to play a guiding role in carrying out U.S. hegemonic policy.
And the fascist danger likewise has never ceased. The U.S. senator from Arkansas, Tom Cotton, recently tried to incite people with the statement: “I encourage people who get stuck behind the pro-Hamas mobs blocking traffic: take matters into your own hands.” Cotton’s remarks, including recommending tossing people over bridges, has resulted in a surge in calls for violence, according to Advance Democracy. Cotton made similar appeals for “mob vigilantes” during Black Lives Matter protests.
As Jewish Voice for Peace has long maintained, safety from fascism can only be found in solidarity with all oppressed people. The amazing momentum in the spread of student encampments is yet another sign of a developing mass movement that not only calls for Palestine’s liberation but also for an end to militarism and repression.
Rod Such lives in Portland, Oregon, where he is active in Palestine solidarity campaigns.
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Israel-Palestine Conflict: A Brief History in Maps and Charts
As Gaza reels from Israel’s devastating bombardments, here’s a brief history of the conflict using maps and charts.
By Mohammed Haddad and Alia Chughtai
al-Jazeera
From Nov 2023
Israel’s deadly bombardment of Gaza has killed nearly 15,000 people, including 10,000 women and children, in over 50 days, making it the deadliest war for the besieged Palestinian enclave till date.
Israel has rebuffed calls for a ceasefire as a four-day humanitarian truce comes to an end on November 28. It is unclear whether the truce will be extended.
The devastation of Gaza and the mounting death toll has triggered worldwide protests, bringing the decades-long issue to the centre-stage of global politics.
The Balfour declaration
The Israeli-Palestinian issue goes back nearly a century when Britain, during World War I, pledged to establish a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine under the Balfour Declaration. British troops took control of the territory from the Ottoman Empire at the end of October 1917.
Jewish immigration to Palestine
A large-scale Jewish migration to Palestine began, accelerated by Jewish people fleeing Nazism in Europe. Between 1918 and 1947, the Jewish population in Palestine increased from 6 percent to 33 percent.
Palestinians were alarmed by the demographic change and tensions rose, leading to the Palestinian revolt from 1936 to 1939.
Meanwhile, Zionist organisations continued to campaign for a homeland for Jews in Palestine. Armed Zionist militias started to attack the Palestinian people, forcing them to flee. Zionism, which emerged as a political ideology in the late 19th century, called for the creation of a Jewish homeland.
The UN Partition Plan
As violence ravaged Palestine, the matter was referred to the newly formed United Nations. In 1947, the UN adopted Resolution 181, which called for the partition of Palestine into Arab and Jewish states, handing over about 55 percent of the land to Jews. Arabs were granted 45 percent of the land, while Jerusalem was declared a separate internationalised territory.
The city is currently divided between West Jerusalem, which is predominantly Jewish, and East Jerusalem with a majority Palestinian population. Israel captured East Jerusalem after the Six-Day War in 1967 along with the West Bank – a step not recognised by the international community.
The Old City in occupied East Jerusalem holds religious significance for Christians, Muslims, and Jews. It is home to Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, which is known to Muslims as al-Haram al-Sharif and to Jews as Temple Mount.
In 1981, the UN designated it a World Heritage Site.
INTERACTIVE_Jerusalem divided city
The Nakba
Leading up to Israel’s birth in 1948, more than 750,000 Palestinians were ethnically cleansed from their homes by Zionist militias. This mass exodus came to be known as the Nakba or catastrophe.
A further 300,000 Palestinians were displaced by the Six-Day War in 1967.
The map of Palestinian exodus following the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.
A map showing Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory after the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.
Israel declared the annexation of East Jerusalem in 1980, but the international community still considers it an occupied territory. Palestinians want East Jerusalem as the capital of their future state.
The Oslo Accords
In 1993, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin signed the Oslo Accords, which aimed to achieve peace within five years. It was the first time the two sides recognised each other.
A second agreement in 1995 divided the occupied West Bank into three parts – Area A, B and C. The Palestinian Authority, which was created in the wake of the Oslo Accords, was offered only limited rule on 18 percent of the land as Israel effectively continued to control the West Bank.
Maps showing the distribution of the occupied West Bank after the Oslo Accords were signed.
Israeli settlements and checkpoints
However, the Oslo Accords slowly broke down as Israeli settlements, Jewish communities built on Palestinian land in the West Bank, grew at a rapid pace.
The settlement population in the West Bank and East Jerusalem grew from approximately 250,000 in 1993 to up to 700,000 in September this year. About three million Palestinians live in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. ...Read More (and to see all the maps)
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Naomi Klein: Jews Must Raise Their Voices
for Palestine, Oppose the 'False Idol of Zionism'
Thousands of Jewish Americans and allies gathered in Brooklyn on Tuesday for a “Seder in the Streets to Stop Arming Israel” on the second night of Passover, held just a block from the home of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, to protest ongoing U.S. support for the Israeli assault on Gaza. “Too many of our people are worshiping a false idol,” said award-winning author and activist Naomi Klein, one of several speakers at Tuesday’s rally. “They are enraptured by it. They are drunk on it. They are profaned by it. And that false idol is called Zionism.”
NAOMI KLEIN: My friends, I’ve been thinking about Moses and his rage when he came down from the mount to find the Israelites worshiping a golden calf. The ecofeminist in me has always been uneasy about this story. What kind of god is jealous of animals? What kind of god wants to hoard all the sacredness of the Earth for himself? But there is, of course, a less literal way of understanding this story. It is a lesson about false idols, about the human tendency to worship the profane and shining, to look to the small and material rather than the large and transcendent.
What I want to say to you this evening at this revolutionary and historic Seder in the Streets is that too many of our people are worshiping a false idol once again. They are enraptured by it. They are drunk on it. They are profaned by it. And that false idol is called Zionism.
It is a false idol that takes our most profound biblical stories of justice and emancipation from slavery, the story of Passover itself, and turns them into brutalist weapons of colonial land theft, roadmaps for ethnic cleansing and genocide. It is a false idol that has taken the transcendent idea of the Promised Land, a metaphor for human liberation that has traveled across faiths to every corner of this globe, and dared to turn it into a deed of sale for a militarist ethnostate.
Political Zionism’s version of liberation is itself profane. From the start, it required the mass expulsion of Palestinians from their homes and ancestral lands in the Nakba. From the start, it has been at war with collective dreams of liberation. At a seder, it is worth remembering that this includes the dreams of liberation and self-determination of the Egyptian people. This false idol of Zionism has long equated Israeli safety with Egyptian dictatorship and unfreedom and client state. From the start, it has produced an ugly kind of freedom that saw Palestinian children not as human beings, but as demographic threats, much as the Pharaoh in the Book of Exodus feared the growing population of Israelites and thus ordered the death of their sons. And as we know, Moses was saved from that by being put in a basket and adopted by an Egyptian woman.
Zionism has brought us to our present moment of cataclysm, and it is time that we say clearly it has always been leading us here. It is a false idol that has led far too many of our own people down a deeply immoral path that now has them justifying the shredding of core commandments — “Thou shall not kill,” “Thou shall not steal,” “Thou shall not covet” — the commandments brought down from the mount. It is a false idol that equates Jewish freedom with cluster bombs that kill and maim Palestinian children.
Zionism is a false idol that has betrayed every Jewish value, including the value that we place on questioning a practice embedded in the seder itself with its four questions asked by the youngest child. It also betrays the love that we have as a people for text and for education. Today this false idol dares to justify the bombing of every single university in Gaza, the destruction of countless schools, of archives, of printing presses, the killing of hundreds of academics, scholars, journalists, poets, essayists. This is what Palestinians call scholasticide, the killing of the infrastructure and the means of education.
Meanwhile, in this city, the universities call the NYPD and barricade themselves against the grave threat posed by their own students asking them —
CROWD: Shame!
NAOMI KLEIN: — students embodying the spirit of the seder, asking the most basic question, asking questions like “How can you claim to believe in anything at all, least of all us, while you enable, invest in and collaborate with this genocide?”
The false idol of Zionism has been allowed to grow unchecked for far too long. So tonight we say it ends here. Our Judaism cannot be contained by an ethnostate, for our Judaism is internationalist by its very nature. Our Judaism cannot be protected by the rampaging military of that ethnostate, for all that military does is sow sorrow and reap hatred, including hatred against us as Jews. Our Judaism is not threatened by people raising their voices in solidarity with Palestine across lines of race, ethnicity, physical ability, gender identity and generations. Our Judaism is one of those voices and knows that in this chorus lies both our safety and our collective liberation.
Our Judaism is the Judaism of the Passover Seder, the gathering in ceremony to share food and wine with loved ones and strangers alike. This ritual, light enough to carry on our backs, in need of nothing but one another, even with — we don’t need walls. We need no temple, no rabbi. And there is a role for everyone, including especially the smallest child. The seder is portable, a diaspora technology if ever there was one. It is made to hold our collective grieving, our contemplation, our questioning, our remembering, and our reviving and rekindling of the revolutionary spirit.
So, tonight — so, look around. This here is our Judaism. As waters rise and forests burn and nothing is certain, we pray at the altar of solidarity and mutual aid, no matter the cost. We don’t need or want the false idol of Zionism. We want freedom from the project that commits genocide in our name. We want freedom from the ideology that has no plan for peace, except for deals with the murderous, theocratic petrostates next door, while selling the technologies of robo-assassinations to the world. We seek to liberate Judaism from an ethnostate that wants Jews to be perennially afraid, that wants our children afraid, that wants us to believe that the world is against us so that we go running to its fortress, or at least keep sending the weapons and the donations.
That is a false idol. And it’s not just Netanyahu. It’s the world he made and the world that made him. It’s Zionism. What are we? We, in these streets for months and months, we are the exodus, the exodus from Zionism. So, to the Chuck Schumers of this world, we do not say, “Let our people go.” We say, “We have already gone, and your kids, they are with us now.” ...Read More
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Bernie Sanders Issues Scathing Statement
Directed at Netanyahu Over Campus Protests
The Vermont Senator, one of America’s highest-profile Jewish lawmakers, said the Israeli leader was head of an ‘extremist and racist government’ and that the US campus protests against the Gaza war are ‘not antisemitic’
By Andrew Feinberg
The Independent, UK
April 25, 2024 - Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders is pushing back after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused US college students protesting against the war in Gaza of being antisemitic.
On Wednesday, Netanyahu’s office released a video of the US-born Israeli leader attacking the student-led protests that have taken over campus spaces at numerous universities. In the video, Netanyahu referred to the protesters as “antisemitic mobs” and accused them of physically attacking Jewish students and faculty.
The Israeli leader added: “This is reminiscent of what happened in German universities in the 1930s. It’s unconscionable. It has to be stopped.”
Senator Sanders — one of America’s highest-profile Jewish lawmakers — responded in a statement on Thursday in which he directly refuted Netanyahu’s accusations and addressed him by name.
“No, Mr Netanyahu. It is not antisemitic or pro-Hamas to point out that in a little over six months your extremist government has killed 34,000 Palestinians and wounded more than 77,000 – seventy percent of whom are women and children. It is not antisemitic to point out that your bombing has completely destroyed more than 221,000 housing units in Gaza, leaving more than one million people homeless – almost half the population,” Mr Sanders said.
The Vermont Senator — an independent who caucuses with Senate Democrats — continued that it was “not antisemitic” to say that the Israeli government “has obliterated Gaza’s civilian infrastructure – electricity, water, and sewage” or “to realize that your government has annihilated Gaza’s health care system, knocking 26 hospitals out of service and killing more than 400 health care workers”.
“It is not antisemitic to agree with virtually every humanitarian organization in saying that your government, in violation of American law, has unreasonably blocked humanitarian aid coming into Gaza, creating the conditions in which hundreds of thousands of children face malnutrition and famine,” he continued.
Sanders closed the statement by again addressing the Israeli leader directly and calling antisemitism “a vile and disgusting form of bigotry that has done unspeakable harm to many millions of people”.
“But, please, do not insult the intelligence of the American people by attempting to distract us from the immoral and illegal war policies of your extremist and racist government. Do not use antisemitism to deflect attention from the criminal indictment you are facing in the Israeli courts. It is not antisemitic to hold you accountable for your actions,” he said.
Protests have taken place at multiple prominent US universities including Yale, Columbia University, New York University, University of Southern California, and the University of Texas, Austin.
Riot police were called to multiple campuses on Wednesday, and scores of students have been arrested in the last two weeks.
US House Speaker Mike Johnson echoed Netanyahu’s criticisms during a visit to Columbia on Wednesday, where he was greeted with a chorus of boos from gathered demonstrators.
Republicans have sought to use the campus protests as a cudgel with which to accuse Democrats generally of supporting antisemitism. They have also sought to contrast President Joe Biden — who has called on Israel to allow more humanitarian aid into Gaza — with their party’s leader, former president Donald Trump, who during his term in office did not criticize Israel, even when the country was accused of human rights abuses.
Trump has been accused of failing to criticize Israel out of fealty to his evangelical Christian base of support. He did, however, recently say that he believed the war in Gaza must end, as it was causing Netanyahu to lose support on the world stage. ...Read More
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Justice Can’t Wait
But Federalist Society justices do when it suits their purposes.
By Michael Podhorzer
Weekend Reading
APR 24, 2024 - More than three years after he summoned and incited an armed mob to launch a deadly attack on the Capitol to overturn the results of an election he knew he had lost, Donald Trump is finally being tried for criminal activities this week.
But it’s not for what he did on January 6th – it’s for election interference in 2016, nearly eight years ago. To be clear, the charges in that trial involve a very serious criminal conspiracy to deceive voters. Trump is being held to account because to do otherwise would be to send a strong signal to future candidates that such gross voter deception will go unprosecuted.
(See this memo from Defend Democracy Project for more.)
But let’s go back to February 13th, 2021, immediately after 43 MAGA Republican senators voted to acquit Donald Trump in his second impeachment, when an emotional Mitch McConnell delivered his verdict on Trump:
“January 6th was a disgrace.
“American citizens attacked their own government. They used terrorism to try to stop a specific piece of democratic business they did not like.
“They did this because they had been fed wild falsehoods by the most powerful man on Earth — because he was angry he’d lost an election…
“Former President Trump’s actions preceding the riot were a disgraceful dereliction of duty … with police officers bleeding and broken glass covering Capitol floors, he kept repeating election lies and praising the criminals.
“We have a criminal justice system in this country. We have civil litigation. And former Presidents are not immune from being held accountable by either one.”
How is it then that we are still waiting for Trump to be held accountable for what we saw with our own eyes and what even Mitch McConnell acknowledged was a thoroughgoing and violent abuse of presidential power to try to overturn the results of an election?
We should be in the eighth week of Trump’s trial for J6, nearing the moment a jury of everyday Americans would finally be able to pass judgment on his actions. But instead, on Thursday SCOTUS will hear arguments in Trump’s frivolous and already soundly rejected appeal for absolute presidential immunity. Make no mistake – unless SCOTUS (absurdly) declares absolute presidential immunity, their delay will have served no legitimate purpose. SCOTUS could and should have settled this question five months ago, when Jack Smith first asked them to, or at least two months ago by denying Trump’s appeal.1
Before they cast ballots in this election, voters deserve to know the full truth about Trump’s attempts to invalidate their choice in the last one. To be clear, the Court can still act in time for a verdict to be reached before the election. They can and should rule on the case immediately. The Court is more than capable of making quick rulings on urgent cases. Thus, the only reason voters might not hear a verdict before they cast a ballot is because the six Federalist Society-approved Supreme Court justices (including three that Trump himself appointed) don’t want them to.
Already, the delays so far mean that if a trial begins, it would be in the heat of the campaign season, when the question of whether to hold the trial will become an additional issue. The late date will inevitably cast a “reasonable people can disagree” cloud over whether to proceed at all, as the reliable cast of “institutionalist” commentators worry that doing so will undermine public confidence in the election results. Beyond that, the timing would give the proceedings a more political flavor for those tuning in late. Many people might not realize that the only reason the trial is coming so close to the election is that SCOTUS prevented it from being wrapped up months before.
While the media consistently reports (1) that Trump’s absolute immunity claims are baseless, (2) that SCOTUS will reject those claims, and (3) that SCOTUS’s decision to hear the case at all will mean a verdict is unlikely before the election, they inevitably stop short of making clear that delay was the Court’s intention. To be fair, there are good reasons to doubt that the Court is doing this to help Trump himself – but those reasons boil down to a dangerous misunderstanding of why the Court didn’t rescue Trump in 2020 and often ruled against him in other matters. More on that later.
The motive for delay is better understood as advancing the Federalist Society agenda, which sometimes but not always involves helping Trump. In that regard, the six Federalist Society justices2 are no different from the long line of establishment Republicans, like McConnell and Paul Ryan, who inevitably overcame their reservations about Trump when doing so furthered their agendas.
SCOTUS and the Federalist Society Project
The media makes a category error when they report on the Court differently from how they report on, say, Congress. There is no practical difference between what McConnell did when he refused to take up Merrick Garland’s nomination and what the six Federalist Society justices are doing now to delay the January 6th trial.
The purpose is the same in both instances: protecting and advancing the decades-long Federalist Society project to install a new federal judiciary to replace the existing one, with broader powers than before.
In November 2021, uncharacteristically, John Roberts publicly pushed back on Trump when he said:
“We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges.”
In an important and strict sense, Roberts is correct – the political fortunes of the presidents who appointed them are generally of little concern to the justices once seated. For the most part, they are not partisan hacks and in that sense are independent of the political process.
But, once you see that the prerequisite for a Republican appointed SCOTUS seat is a genuine commitment to the Federalist Society project, it becomes obvious that their actions are in no way “independent” of the party’s judicial nominee gatekeepers.
As I laid out in “To the Supreme Court, the Twentieth Century Was Wrongly Decided,” the Federalist Society’s project is broader and deeper than “merely” its substantive agenda to roll back civil rights and dismantle corporate accountability. (And the Federalist Society itself is acting in the interests of a broader coalition of both wealthy business interests and white Christian nationalists.) This project is not about the justices passively ruling conservatively on controversies as they arrive at the Court’s door, soberly committed to stare decisis. It is an active effort to both select and rule on cases that make the Court the dominant policy-making branch of government, defended from democratic accountability by the certainty of Republican filibusters. So it shouldn’t be difficult to see that the politicians advancing the coalition’s agenda legislatively would do the same when confirming justices. Mitch McConnell didn’t hold up Merrick Garland’s nomination in order to fill the seat with a better jurist.
As far as I know, the stakes of the 2024 election for the success of the Federalist Society project have gone unremarked upon. Whether Democrats win the Senate, in addition to Biden winning the White House, will determine whether this anti-democratic project can be thwarted.
By 2028, Clarence Thomas will be 80, Samuel Alito 78 and, as we’ve heard a lot recently, some say Sonia Sotomayor is in failing health. That means that by 2028, Trump could make nominations that add up to a 7-2 Federalist Society majority, with John Roberts the only one over 60 years old, or Biden’s nominees could constitute a 5-4 “Democratic” majority, with Elena Kagan the only one over 60 years old (68). The stakes are similar in terms of the federal appeals and district courts, where a second Trump term would likely provide Federalist Society majorities on even more of the circuits, and many of his second term appointments would be unqualified ideologues like Matthew Kacsmaryk. On the other hand, a second Biden Administration (with a Senate majority) could claw back Federalist Society majorities in several circuits.
It’s difficult to believe that the Federalist Society justices delaying the J6 trial were ignorant or indifferent to the fact that the success of their life’s project was on the line.
The Illusion of Democratic Resilience
For the last several years, we’ve taken at face value that Republican election administrators like Brad Raffensperger, Justice Department officials like Bill Barr, and a Supreme Court packed with three Trump appointees rejecting Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election at every turn as evidence that “democratic institutions held.” Typical was reporting like “In Key States, Republicans Were Critical in Resisting Trump’s Election Narrative: They refuted conspiracy theories, certified results, dismissed lawsuits and repudiated a president of their own party.”
This narrative is dangerously flawed because it takes no account of the incentives of each of those Republican actors: They faced a classic prisoner’s dilemma because immediately after the election, Biden was seen to have flipped Arizona and Georgia as well as the more expected Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. That was crucial because it meant that for Trump to win the Electoral College, three of those five states would have to reverse the results. Thus, on January 2, 2021, when Trump asked him to find 11,780 votes, Brad Raffensperger knew that even if he did, unless two of the other four states did the same, Biden would still be sworn in, and he, Raffensperger, would be exposed to prosecution for very serious felonies. And remember, the secretaries of state of the other four states were Democrats.
Now, let’s turn to Bill Barr and others at the Justice Department. Remember that before the election, Barr went on TV to say that “Elections that have been held with mail have found substantial fraud and coercion.” But at the J6 hearings, he reported telling Trump that such claims were “bull s**t.” Similarly, J6 testimony from DOJ officials who resisted Trump’s efforts because they were unlawful have to be understood less as courageous commitment to the “rule of law” and more as a personal calculation that, like Raffensperger, there was nothing they could do to ensure a second Trump Administration that didn’t require many others going along as well. And remember that they were fully aware of the consequences of going along with a rogue president: after Watergate, 41 people were criminally convicted, including the Attorney General and the White House Chief of Staff.
Trump’s allies on the Supreme Court faced a similar, but not identical, dilemma. Unlike in 2000, when Bush’s allies on the Court had to make only one ruling (albeit unprecedented and controversial) to select him president, reversing the results of the 2020 election would have meant overturning elections in three states decided by tens of thousands of votes instead of one “decided” by less than 600 votes. Especially given the business community’s clearly stated commitment to a peaceful transfer of power, intervention would have been a bridge too far. But, more important than that, it’s important to remember that before January 6th, Trump’s Republican establishment foes, including Mitch McConnell, were fairly pleased with the election result. They felt it was win-win – voters would sweep Trump out of their lives, and if, as they expected, Republicans won at least one of the two run-offs in Georgia, they would have a Senate majority to make Biden a harmless one-term president.
Selective Concern for the Constitution
At a basic level, the Supreme Court’s most important job is supposed to be upholding the Constitution. As such, a deadly attack on the constitutional order should outrage the justices at least as much as it outrages us. Remember that what happened on the Capitol grounds on January 6th, as well as the fake elector schemes and other plots leading up to that day that were revealed by the January 6th committee and news reports, constitute the greatest (and only) threat to the peaceful transfer of power in the nation’s history, separate from determining Trump’s culpability in instigating it.
Yet in their jurisprudence, first the Court moved with alacrity to ensure that Trump would remain on the Colorado ballot, sidestepping the question of whether he had engaged in an insurrection. And in the last few weeks, they decided to hear the appeal of Joseph Fischer, a convicted January 6th insurrectionist out of faux concern that the statute used to charge him (and about 300 others) could theoretically be used to suppress legitimate protest.3 Moreover, should they rule in favor of Fischer it would cast doubt on the heretofore uncontroversial prosecution of those attacking the Capitol on January 6th, as well as challenge counts in the indictment against Trump.
Yet this eagerness to protect hypothetical future exercise of non-violent First Amendment speech and assembly was nowhere to be found in another case involving a Black Lives Matter protest. The Court allowed the organizer of that protest, which was non-violent save for a single protester throwing a rock at a police officer, to be sued for that one protester’s actions.
The Federalist Society justices have also expressed no concern for the propagation of the Big Lie or the various baseless efforts to cast doubt on the election results, the basis for establishing the consent of the governed. Yet they’ve had no problem making unequivocal public statements about the dangers of people losing faith in the Supreme Court’s legitimacy due to criticism of their rulings and reporting about their ethical challenges.
Conclusion
No matter how skeptical any of the six Federalist Society justices are of Trump’s immunity claims on Thursday, remember that for that skepticism to have any value, it should have been exercised nearly two months ago to deny cert. We can never lose sight of the fact that those six justices are no different than any of the other “establishment” Republicans whose commitment to their agenda always trumps their commitment to democracy.
The Federalist Society justices’ decision to stop Trump’s J6 trial is actually more egregiously anti-democratic than Bush v. Gore. By saying that I do not mean to minimize Bush v. Gore. But by the time that SCOTUS heard Bush v. Gore the country was in crisis, with no consensus about what to do next. In this instance, the Federalist Society justices have created a crisis where none existed by choosing to halt the trial to “settle” a question that had already been settled to the satisfaction of everyone on this side of MAGA. ...Read More
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Photo: Eduardo Retano plants root stock of strawberry plants. From David Bacon.
The Human Cost Of A Strawberry Wage
By David Bacon
Civil Eats
April 24, 2024 - Driving north on California's Highway 101 through the central coast, a traveler approaches the Santa Ynez Valley through miles of grapevines climbing gently rolling hills. Here humans have mastered nature, the landscape seems to say - a bucolic vision of agriculture with hardly a worker in sight. Perhaps a lone irrigator adjusts drip pipes or sprinklers.
Only during a few short weeks in the fall can one see the harvest crews filling gondolas behind the tractors. Even then, you'd have to be driving at night, when most grape picking now takes place under floodlights that illuminate the rows behind the machines.
As 101 winds out of the hills, the crop beside the highway suddenly changes. Here endless rows of strawberries fill the valley's flat plane. Dirt access roads bisect enormous fields, and beside them dozens of cars sit parked in the dust. Most are older vans and sedans. Inside this vast expanse dozens of workers move down the rows.
From the highway, many fields are hidden by tall plastic screens. Growers claim they keep animals out, but they are really a legacy of the farmworker strikes of the 1970s. Then growers sought to keep workers inside, away from strikers in the roadway calling out to them, urging them to stop picking and leave. The abusive and dangerous conditions of strawberry workers today, and the eruptions of their protests over them, make the screens more than just a symbol of past conflict.
Picking strawberries is one of the most brutal jobs in agriculture. A worker picking wine grapes in the hills can labor standing up. But the men and women in the strawberry rows have to bend double to reach the berries. As strawberries ripen, they hang over the side of raised beds about a foot high, covered in plastic. In a ditch-like row between them, a worker pushes a wire cart on tiny wheels. Each holds a cardboard flat with 8 plastic clamshell containers - the ones you see on supermarket shelves.
The pain of this labor is a constant. Many workers will say you just have to work through the first week, when your back hurts so much you can't sleep, until your body adjusts and the pain somehow gets less. At the start of the season in March, rain fills the rows with water and the cart must be dragged through the mud. When summer comes the field turns into an oven by midday.
Through it all, workers have to pick as fast as possible. "At the beginning of the season there aren't many berries yet," Matilde told me. She'd been picking for three weeks, her fifth year in the strawberries. "The mud makes heavy work even heavier. It's hard to pick even 5 boxes an hour, but if I can't make that, or if I pick any green berries, it gets called to my attention. The foreman tells us we're not trying hard enough, that they don't have time to teach us, and if we can't make it we won't keep working. Some don't come back the next day, and some are even fired there in the field."
Mathilde didn't want to use her last name because being identified might bring retaliation from her boss, a fear shared by another worker, Juana. "Not many people can do this job," Juana told me in an interview. She came to Santa Maria from Santiago Tilantongo in Oaxaca and speaks Mixtec (one of the many indigenous languages in southern Mexico), in addition to Spanish, like many strawberry pickers living in the Santa Ynez Valley. She's been a strawberry worker for 15 years. "I have permanent pain in my lower back," she said, "and when it rains it gets very intense. Still, I get up every morning at 4, make lunch for my family, and go to work. It's a sacrifice, but it's the only job I can get."
Low Wages, High Cost of Living
On April 1 the Alianza Campesina de la Costa Central (Farmworker Alliance of the Central Coast) organized an event timed to gain public notice at the beginning of the strawberry season. The objective was to pressure growers to raise the wages. The Alianza issued a powerful 44-page report, Harvesting Dignity, The Case for a Living Wage for Farmworkers, that documents in shocking statistics what Mathilda and Juana know from personal experience.
Those statistics reveal that the mean hourly wage for farmworkers in Santa Barbara County was $17.42 last year, which would produce a yearly income of $36,244 for a strawberry picker working fulltime, all twelve months. But this calculation includes the higher wages of foremen and management employees. Juana, after 15 years, made $16, the state minimum wage, and Mathilde after five years made the same.
In reality, their annual income was much lower because even working the entire season, they would get no more than eight months of work, and often less. At the beginning of the season there are not enough berries for 8 hours each day, so Mathilda only got 6 hours, or 36 hours in a week working on Saturday too. Juana's week in late March was 15-20 hours.
At the height of the season wages go up because growers begin to pay a piece rate, which last year was usually $2.20 for each flat of eight clamshell boxes. To make the equivalent of the minimum wage, a worker would have to pick over 7 flats an hour, and earning more than minimum wage on the piece rate means working like a demon, ignoring the physical cost. At the beginning of the season, "champion pickers can do 8 or 9 an hour," Mathilde explains. "but not everyone can. 6 or 7 is normal."
Fulltime work at minimum wage for eight months would produce $21,760. Out of her strawberry wages Juana and her husband, who works in the field with her, are paying $2000 a month rent, or $24,000 a year. Three of her children are grown, and the other three are still at home. "We have to save to pay the rent during the winter when there's no work. If we don't, we don't have a place to live," she explains. "During those five months there are always bills we can't pay, like water. By March there's no money at all, and we have to get loans to survive." The loans come from "friends" who charge 10% interest. "Plus, I have to send money to my mama and papa in Mexico. There are many people depending on me."
Mathilde and her husband and their two children share a bedroom in a two-bedroom house. Another family of three lives in the other, and together they pay $2,200 in rent. "Fortunately, my husband works construction, and gets $20 an hour," she says, "but the same months when there are no strawberries the rain cuts his hours too. It would be much harder if we didn't have his work, and we try to save and save, and look for work in the winter, but often there's just enough money for food. We don't eat beef or fish, just economical foods like pasta, rice and beans. And even with that sometimes we have to get a loan too."
According to Harvesting Justice, the median rent in Santa Barbara County is $2,999 per month. Using the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's living wage calculation formula, the report estimates the annual food cost for a family with two children at $12,880, and the total income required for all basic expenses at $99,278. As a result, a UC Merced/California Department of Public Health survey found that a quarter of all farmworkers sleep in a room with three or more people.
This poverty affects all farmworkers in the state, in all aspects of life. Less than a quarter of undocumented field laborers have health insurance, and the Harvesting Dignity report estimates that people without immigration documents make up 80 percent of those living in Santa Maria. Because reporting bad conditions, and even more so protesting them, is much riskier for undocumented workers, having no papers affects survival at work as well. "In Santa Barbara County in 2023 there were two farmworker deaths," it noted, "both related to poor supervision and training. In one instance, farmworkers reported they were told to continue working in a Cuyama carrot field alongside the body of their fallen coworker."
Workers Calling for Change: The Wish Farms Strike
Santa Maria strawberry workers have mounted many challenges to this low wage system. In 1997 a Mixteco worker group organized a strike that stopped the harvest on all the valley's ranches, which lasted three days. More recently workers at Rancho Laguna Farms protested the owner's failure to follow CDC guidelines during the pandemic, and won a 20¢ per box raise by stopping work. In 2021 forty pickers at Hill Top Produce used the same tactic to raise the per-box piece rate from $1.80 to $2.10, which was followed by similar action by 150 pickers at West Coast Berry Farms. At the beginning of the next season in 2022 work stopped at J&G Berry Farms in another wage protest.
Last year, workers carried out a dramatic and well-organized strike at Wish Farms, a large berry grower with fields in Santa Maria and Lompoc, and headquarters in Florida. At the height of the season, to increase production the company promised a wage of $6/hour plus $2.50 per box, a rate they'd paid the previous year. When workers saw their checks, however, the piece rate bonus was a dollar less. They met with Fernando Martinez, an organizer with the Mixteco Indigenous Community Organizing Project (MICOP), which belongs to the Alianza Campesina. Martinez and MICOP organizers had helped workers during the earlier work stoppages, and urged the Wish Farms strikers to go out to the fields to call other workers to join. "We helped them form a committee," Martinez says, "and in a meeting at the edge of the field they voted to form a permanent organization, Freseros por la Justicia [Strawberry Workers for Justice]." ...Read More
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Digging Deeper into the Current Conjuncture: |
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Here is the statement up on the DSA web site today.
Solidarity with the Student Movement and the Gaza Solidarity Encampments
APRIL 25, 2024
DSA stands in unwavering solidarity with the students across Columbia, Yale, NYU, Vanderbilt, Cal Poly, University of Michigan and the dozens of rapidly developing encampments at campuses across the country. The victories of the student movement are incumbent upon the victories and wins of Palestinian student groups, and we pledge to fight alongside them for a free Palestine as they face increasingly unprecedented repression from the state. These wins are a precedent for our movement as a whole, and follow a decades-long tradition of students putting their bodies on the line to stop the ravages of imperialism and the military-industrial complex, such as the movements against the Vietnam War, South African apartheid, and the Iraq War.
We support the righteous message of protesters at the encampments. We call on our comrades to support efforts nationwide to force universities to divest from the Zionist occupation and call on the United States government to cease all aid to Israel. Where protests appear, we’ll appear in numbers. Where repression looms, we’ll show up and protect the whole. Where support is needed, we’ll be a support.
As socialists, we must not lose sight of our fight for the urgent stop to the genocide in Gaza and the liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea. We commend the student movement on re-igniting the streets and we will fight by their side, shoulder to shoulder, to force all our institutions to divest from the Zionist settler colonial project, end all aid and arms to Israel, and for the complete and full liberation of Palestine.
*Laws vary by state, and we encourage event organizers and participants to contact your local region of the National Lawyers Guild for guidance on how to protect protesters.
Added by NorthStar Caucus:
Dialogue: Problem Posing Education
I search for basic agreements.
I search for strengths in your position.
I reflect on my position.
I consider the possibility of finding a better solution than mine or yours.
I assume that many people have a piece of the answer.
I want to find common ground.
I submit my best thinking hoping your reflection will improve it.
I remain open to talk about the subject later on.
Anti-dialogue:
I search for glaring differences.
I search for weaknesses in your position.
I attack your position.
I denigrate you and your position.
I defend my solution and exclude yours.
I am invested wholeheartedly in my beliefs.
I assume there is one right answer, and that I have it.
I want to win.
I submit my best thinking and defend it to show it is right.
I expect to settle this here and now.
I seek to silence those who disagree with my position.
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Hamas Official Says Group Would Lay Down Its Arms If An Independent Palestinian State Is Established
By Abby Sewell
Associated Press via Cleveland Jewish News
ISTANBUL (AP) — A top Hamas political official told The Associated Press it is willing to agree to a truce of five years or more with Israel and that it would lay down its weapons and convert into a political party if an independent Palestinian state is established along pre-1967 borders.
The comments by Khalil al-Hayya in an interview Wednesday came amid a stalemate in months of talks for a cease-fire in Gaza. The suggestion that Hamas would disarm appeared to be a significant concession by Hamas officially committed to Israel’s destruction.
But it's unlikely Israel would consider such a scenario. It has vowed to crush Hamas following the deadly Oct. 7 attacks that triggered the war, and its current leadership is adamantly opposed to the creation of a Palestinian state on lands Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast war.
Al-Hayya, a high-ranking Hamas official who has represented the Palestinian group in negotiations for a cease-fire and hostage exchange, struck a sometimes defiant and other times conciliatory tone.
Speaking to the AP in Istanbul, Al-Hayya said Hamas wants to join the Palestine Liberation Organization, headed by the rival Fatah faction, to form a unified government for Gaza and the West Bank. He said Hamas would accept “a fully sovereign Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and the return of Palestinian refugees in accordance with the international resolutions,” along Israel’s pre-1967 borders.
If that happens, he said, the group's military wing would dissolve.
“All the experiences of people who fought against occupiers, when they became independent and obtained their rights and their state, what have these forces done? They have turned into political parties and their defending fighting forces have turned into the national army,” he said.
Over the years, Hamas has sometimes moderated its public position with respect to the possibility of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. But its political program still officially “rejects any alternative to the full liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea" — referring to the area reaching from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, which includes lands that now make up Israel.
Al-Hayya did not say whether his apparent embrace of a two-state solution would amount to an end to the Palestinian conflict with Israel or an interim step toward the group’s stated goal of destroying Israel.
There was no immediate reaction from Israel or the Palestinian Authority, the internationally recognized self-ruled government that Hamas drove out when it seized Gaza in 2007, a year after winning Palestinian parliamentary elections. After the Hamas takeover of Gaza, the Palestinian Authority was left with administering semi-autonomous pockets of the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
The Palestinian Authority hopes to establish an independent state in the West Bank, east Jerusalem and Gaza — areas captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war. While the international community overwhelmingly supports such a two-state solution, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s hard-line government rejects it. ...Read More
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Photo: The 3D-printed house is located in the Porto area of the Iberian Peninsula and measures 80 sq m (roughly 860 sq ft)
Affordable Starter Home Is 3D-Printed In Just 18 Hours
By Adam Williams
New Atlas
April 25, 2024 - One of the most exciting possibilities of 3D-printed architecture is that it could revolutionize affordable housing. Portugal's Havelar shows this may soon be within reach with its inaugural 3D-printed home, which took just 18 hours to print.
Located in the Greater Porto area of Portugal's second-largest city, the unnamed 80 sq m (roughly 860 sq ft) two-bedroom residence was built using COBOD's BOD2 printer, which was also used on Europe's largest 3D-printed building. According to COBOD, Havelar's houses can be produced for €1,500 per sq m, which it contrasts favorably with the Porto average of €3,104 (around US$3,330) per square meter.
This cheaper price tag is largely due to the speed of construction offered by the 3D printer, which follows a blueprint and extrudes a cement-like mixture out of a nozzle in layers, building up the basic structure of the home.
Though, as mentioned, the printing process itself took 18 hours, human builders then came in and finished it by installing the windows, door, paneling, roof, and anything else needed. Including the human labor, the entire project took under two months to complete.
The home takes the form of a simple single-story residence defined by the telltale ribbed walls that show that it has been constructed with a 3D printer. Its interior is arranged around a central kitchen and dining room, with the living room, two bedrooms and bathroom adjoining. It's obviously relatively basic compared to other 3D-printed houses we've seen, like the more high-end Wolf Ranch models, though it's also around $400,000 cheaper, so is focused toward a totally different market.
Starter home for young people
The 3D-printed house is envisioned as a starter home for young people
This is the first 3D-printed home Havelar has produced, so it's early days yet, but looking to the future, the firm hopes to scale up production and reach carbon neutrality by 2030 by adopting alternative construction materials like earth and straw.
"We want to team up with partners who see themselves in building sustainable and accessible communities," said Rodrigo Vilas-Boas, Co-Founder of Havelar. "With €150,000 [$161,000], it's possible for a young couple to have the home they've always dreamed of, in an area with good access and services." ...Read More
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New Journals and Books for Radical Education...
Use Changemaker for Your Holiday Gifts,
Thus Lending Us a Hand, Too!
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From Upton
Sinclair's 'Goose Step' to the Neoliberal University
Essays on the Ongoing Transformation of Higher Education
Paperback USD 17.00
This is a unique collection of 15 essays by two Purdue University professors who use their institution as a case-in-point study of the changing nature of the American 'multiversity.' They take a book from an earlier time, Upton Sinclair's 'The Goose-Step A Study of American Education' from 1923, which exposed the capitalist corruption of the ivory tower back then and brought it up to date with more far-reaching changes today. time. They also include, as an appendix, a 1967 essay by SDS leader Carl Davidson, who broke some of the original ground on the subject.
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The Man Who Changed Colors
By Bill Fletcher, Jr.
When a dockworker falls to his death under strange circumstances, investigative journalist David Gomes is on the case. His dogged pursuit of the truth puts his life in danger and upends the scrappy Cape Cod newspaper he works for.
Spend a season on the Cape with this gripping, provocative tale that delves into the
complicated relationships between Cape Verdean Americans and African Americans, Portuguese fascist gangs, and abusive shipyard working conditions. From the author of The Man Who Fell From The Sky.
“Bill Fletcher is a truth seeker and a truth teller – even when he’s writing fiction. Not unlike Bill, his character David Gomes is willing to put his life and career in peril to expose the truth. A thrilling read!” − Tavis Smiley, Broadcaster & NY TIMES Bestselling Author
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VVAW: 50 Years
of Struggle
By Alynne Romo
While most books about VVAW focus on the 1960s and 1970s, this photo-with-text book provides a look at many of actions of VVAW over five decades. Some of VVAW’s events and its stands on issues are highlighted here in stories. Others show up in the running timelines which also include relevant events around the nation or the world. Examples of events are the riots in America’s urban centers, the murders of civil rights leaders or the largely failed missions in Vietnam.
Paul Tabone: This is a must read for anyone who was in the war, who had a loved one in the war, who is interested in history in general or probably more importantly for anyone who wants to see how we repeat history over and over again given the incredible idiot and his minions that currently occupy the White House. To my fellow Viet Nam veterans I say "Welcome Home Brothers". A must read for everyone who considers them self an American. Bravo.
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A China Reader
Edited by Duncan McFarland
A project of the CCDS Socialist Education Project & Online University of the Left
244 pages, $20 (discounts available for quantity orders from carld717@gmail.com), or order at :
The book is a selection of essays offering keen insight into the nature of China and its social system, its internal debates, and its history. It includes several articles on the US and China and the growing efforts of friendship between the Chinese and American peoples.
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Taking Down
White Supremacy
Edited by the CCDS
Socialist Education Project
This collection of 20 essays brings together a variety of articles-theoretical, historical, and experiential-that address multi-racial, multi-national unity. The book provides examples theoretically and historically, of efforts to build multi-racial unity in the twentieth century.
166 pages, $12.50 (discounts available for quantity), order at :
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Photo: City Council Members Tiffany Cabán (second from left), Alexa Avilés (third from left), Shahana Hanif (second from right) and Sandy Nurse (far right) visited the “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” at Columbia University on April 20, 2024.,TALIA JANE
We Visited the Solidarity Encampment at
Columbia University. Here’s What It’s Really Like.
What we saw couldn’t be more different from the dire warnings of rampant antisemitic threats and pervasive danger coming from City Hall, Albany and the White House.
By Tiffany Cabán, Shahana Hanif,
Sandy Nurse and Alexa Avilés
City and State
April 24, 2024 - If you only go by the recent statements from Mayor Eric Adams, Gov. Kathy Hochul, and President Joe Biden, you might conclude that a student protest against the mass killing in Gaza is worse than the killing itself.
These official statements, and so many posts on social media, depict the Gaza Solidarity Encampment on the Columbia University campus as a cesspit of antisemitic hatred and a threat to the safety of all Jewish students and faculty. The vilification of these students reached its climax last week, when Columbia President Minouche Shafik assessed that the encampment posed “a clear and present danger” to the university and invited the NYPD’s notoriously violent Strategic Response Group to crush the protest and arrest more than 100 students who participated in it.
On Saturday, we visited the reconstituted encampment ourselves to add our voices to the students’ calls for a ceasefire in Gaza and freedom for Palestinians. What we saw couldn’t be more different from the dire warnings of rampant antisemitic threats and pervasive danger coming from City Hall, Albany and the White House.
The encampment is completely peaceful – an assessment shared not only by NBC’s reporter on the scene, but even NYPD Police Chief John Chell, whom we are not accustomed to agreeing with. The demonstration is well-organized, clean and disciplined. New entrants are immediately asked to commit to sound community agreements, which include not engaging with provocateurs. Over 100 student groups are coordinating 24-hour programming, inspiring interfaith spaces, snacks and art supplies for children and musical performances. This is the exact sort of initiative that should be welcomed, not suppressed, by the university’s leadership.
This is particularly true in light of the saga that led to this moment. Students have respectfully uplifted a set of demands, centering on the university’s divestment from the oppression of Palestinians, for months. Over that time, their tactics have escalated from distributing pamphlets to organizing rallies and walkouts and now to this encampment, because at every point they have been met either with silence from university administrators or with repression. Last November, the administration suspended campus chapters of Jewish Voice for Peace and Students for Justice in Palestine. The student protesters even endured an attack with a chemical agent – about which the mayor, governor, and president were largely silent.
Far from a danger zone where Jews should fear to tread, the encampment hosted a large kabbalat shabbat service on Friday evening, followed the next night by an equally well-attended havdalah service. These, along with the many statements from Jewish students and faculty testifying to feeling safe on campus and condemning Shafik’s crackdown on the protests, should call into question the glib narrative peddled by those in power that the protesters are antisemites and Columbia and Barnard are hostile to their Jewish populations.
Make no mistake: antisemitism is real and poses a danger to our beloved Jewish neighbors and friends. Physical violence, swastika graffiti, antisemitic conspiracy theory, Holocaust denial and more constitute serious threats to a community who has faced brutality and terror for centuries and centuries, all over the world. What’s more, antisemitism threatens other marginalized communities as well. Antisemitic conspiracy theories bind together all types of racist, sexist, queerphobic paranoia and hate. Those who peddle the myth that Jews control the world are not only liable to attack Jews, but also immigrants, Muslims, queer people and other members of scapegoated out-groups as well. We say loudly and clearly: none of us can be safe if any of us is in danger.
It is also true that, in recent days, some fringe agitators have made unequivocally antisemitic and hateful statements outside the encampment itself. We condemn these abhorrent actions wholeheartedly. There is no place for bigotry and violence in the movement for peace. It would be a grave error, however, to treat these actions as reflective of the larger protests, as Columbia student organizations have explicitly denounced them.
It does not combat antisemitism, nor keep students safe, to effect mass arrests of peaceful protesters, suddenly evict students from campus housing, unaccountably suspend leaders of the student movement for Palestinian rights or impose regimes of censorship. To the contrary, actions such as these stoke tensions, drive divisions and endanger everyone pursuing higher education. For a campus to be truly safe for all its students, it must welcome protest and foster free inquiry and democratic discourse. As Shafik herself said last fall, “The point of university is to be intellectually challenged and confronted with difference.”
Now, at the outset of Passover, we are moved by the Jewish freedom celebration’s commitment to welcoming the stranger, feeding all who seek food, humanizing the oppressed, resisting racism and hatred, standing in solidarity with those who seek redemption from bondage and asking questions – even, maybe especially, very hard ones. We pray that these values will prevail, not just at Columbia and Barnard, but around the entire world, and particularly in the Holy Land.
We believe in freedom, safety and equal rights for all Palestinians and Israelis, and we celebrate the students fighting for those aims, undaunted in the face of hostile university administrators and armed police battalions.
Tiffany Cabán is a City Council member representing Astoria. Shahana Hanif is a City Council member representing Park Slope, co-chair of the Council Task Force to Combat Hate and co-chair of the Council Progressive Caucus. Sandy Nurse is a City Council member representing Bushwick and a co-chair of the Council Progressive Caucus. Alexa Avilés, a 1995 graduate of Columbia College, is a City Council member representing Sunset Park. ...Read More
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CHANGEMAKER PUBLICATIONS: Recent works on new paths to socialism and the solidarity economy
Remember Us for Gift Giving and Study Groups
Interested in Studying Gramsci? In a Serious way? We have a group that meets Sundays via Zoom, 11am-12:30pm, facilitated by Piruz Alemi. We go paragraph by paragraph, even line by line, reading aloud, then discussing, through The Prison Notebooks, using an online PDF. If you are interested contact Carl Davidson at carld717@gmail.com
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Treat someone to a wonderful book.
And treat yourself, too!
Powerful stories, wonderful gifts.
As they stand up, slow down, form unions, leave an abusive relationship or just stir up good trouble, the characters in this multi-generation novel entertain and enlighten, make us laugh and rage, and encourage us to love deeply, that we may continue the fight for justice.
"So much fiction is about escape and fantasy, but these powerful Tales of Struggle will enrich our real and daily lives." ─ Gloria Steinem
“What a wonderful story of class, class struggle and regular people. The story is about struggle and change, but also about joy and humor. Great work! ─ Bill Fletcher, Jr., author of Solidarity Divided
Price: $15.00
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Photo: The Library Company reading room on Juniper Street in Philadelphia c. 1935, one of the group’s main locations from 1880 to 1935.
History Lesson of the Week: Frank Borzage’s ‘Man’s Castle’: The Rediscovery of a Depression-Era Masterpiece
A new restoration of Frank Borzage’s 'Man’s Castle' starring Loretta Young and Spencer Tracy, showcases the visionary Hollywood director’s lusty yet spiritual artistry balancing a sharply etched view of poverty in the shadow of wealth.
By Richard Brody
The New Yorker
April 24, 2024 - For decades, I’ve cherished the 1933 comedy-drama “Man’s Castle” as a gem of classic Hollywood, and one that succeeds in uniting rare romantic refinement and harsh, Depression-scarred candor.
It’s set mainly in a shantytown under a New York bridge, whose inhabitants include Bill (Spencer Tracy), a hard-nosed wanderer with boundless chutzpah, and Trina (Loretta Young), a starving yet steadfast ingénue to whom he gives shelter. (Trina and Bill quickly become a couple, and the movie’s central question is whether Bill, whose wanderlust is stoked by the sound of a train whistle, will stay put with Trina or hop a freight without her.)
The movie balances a sharply etched view of poverty in the shadow of wealth with an attentiveness to the personalities and foibles of the shantytown dwellers. The keen wit and wry antics of the film’s director, Frank Borzage, match a deeply sympathetic tenderness for the characters’ strivings and vulnerabilities; “Man’s Castle” offers a vast vision of exaltation and degradation, and of the wild daring, even heroism, that is born of desperate circumstances. ...Read More
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Mexico’s 3-Month Presidential Campaign
Mexico Solidarity Project from April 24, 2024
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A Migrant AND a Mexican Representative!
The municipality of Coyoacán in Mexico City is Alejandro Robles Gómez’s home base, but he has lived for some time in Canada. His activist roots go back to the student strikes at UNAM (National Autonomous University of Mexico) in 1999/2000, where students resisted a massive tuition hike. In 2006, he began his political service as a representative in the national Congress and has served in various other political positions. Since 2021, as a Morena representative in Congress, he has been a strong advocate for human rights, migrant rights, and uplifting the poor.
As someone living in Toronto, how did you become a Mexican Congressperson (Diputado)?
Morena has reformed Congress to make it the most inclusive in the world, with affirmative action for five traditionally disenfranchised groups: Indigenous, disabled, Afro-descendants, LBGTQ+, and migrants living abroad. I don’t represent migrants in particular; in fact, we diputados/as from abroad are elected by the Mexican people residing in the place we come from. My base is Coyoacán, a municipality in Mexico City. But since my family lives abroad, naturally I specialize in immigration issues.
In the past, people leaving Mexico were sometimes called traitors, but now we call them heroes and heroines. Their remittances of millions of pesos sent home to Mexico are recognized as a major contribution to the Mexican economy.
Immigration is a major issue in US elections. Most US politicians want migrants to “stay in Mexico.” What solutions do you propose?
AMLO has made clear that the burden of a US problem should not be put on Mexico’s back.
Migration is a bilateral issue that involves workers’ rights within the context of trade; we need a renegotiation of the USMCA’s Chapter 23 on labor. First, both countries should provide work permits to migrants. For the US, instead of relying on detention, which requires many facilities, and deportation, which requires a huge police and military effort, the US should recognize that most migrants have people in the US to live with and are willing and able to work. Jobs are available in Mexico, too.
Secondly, the five million undocumented workers in the US, especially in the agricultural sector, are the most insecure and therefore most exploited group of US workers. They need social security numbers and the same labor rights as citizen workers. If these workers are allowed to unionize, the migrant situation will improve on both sides of the border.
In Mexico, the National Institute of Migration is supposed to provide guidance and support, but it’s been corrupt and ineffective. My proposal to Congress is that we create a new Ministry of Migration and Human Mobility using human rights principles. It would guarantee migrant safety and provide services to those either staying or passing through.
The treatment of Haitian migrants is especially upsetting. Mexico has not provided adequate support; they’re more poorly treated than migrants from other countries, and many are sleeping in the streets. These are our brothers and sisters, and we must tackle our own society’s racism. ...Read More
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New Liberation Road
Booklets supporting the Mexico Solidarity Project
By Bill Gallegos
Liberation Road is the only major US revolutionary socialist organization that has a developed position on Chicano Liberation, and one of the few that understands and works to build solidarity with the socialist movements and revolutionaries of Mexico. Now we have something that explains those positions - a series of Liberation Road pamphlets entitled Adelante! (Forward!). The pamphlets were developed collectively by several comrades, with support from comrades outside the organization.
The articles are enhanced and enriched by the powerful art and culture that is a major component of the pamphlets. While Adelante! was introduced at the recent Mexico Solidarity tour of the Mexico Solidarity Project they are meant as important resources for all comrades of Liberation Road — to better understand our strategic perspectives on Chicano Liberation and Mexico Solidarity (internationalism), and to help us promote those perspectives in all of our mass and red work.
This has always been an important task for our organization, but now more than ever as the New Confederacy seems to have made immigration the center of their attack on democracy, equity, and social justice. In order to support comrades in understanding and advancing our strategic perspectives we are going to be conducting at least one webinar to discuss our line and how to integrate Adelante! in your work. Adelante! is a product of love comrades, an expression of the spirit element that Che Guevarra insisted is at the heart of every true revolutionary’s work. A link to download the booklets will be available by next week. Meanwhile, contact Bill Gallegos at billg4@gmail.com
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Our Amazing Resource for Radical Education
From the settlers to the present, and how its consciousness is conflicted. Prepared by Carl Davidson and Rebecca Tarlau,
with some help from the DSA Rust Belt group.
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There are hundreds of video courses here, along with study guides, downloadable books and links to hundreds of other resources for study groups or individuals.
Nearly 10,000 people have signed on to the OUL for daily updates, and more than 150,000 have visited us at least once.
Karl Marx's ideas are a common touchstone for many people working for change. His historical materialism, his many contributions to political economy and class analysis, all continue to serve his core values--the self-emancipation of the working class and a vision of a classless society. There are naturally many trends in Marxism that have developed over the years, and new ones are on the rise today. All of them and others who want to see this project succeed are welcome here.
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Video for Learning: Formerly Anti-Union Volkswagen Worker Explains Why He Switched to Pro-Union...13 min
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Harry Targ's 'Diary of a Heartland Radical' |
This week's topic:
ANTISEMITISM CHARGES ARE USED TO CRUSH DEBATE
Click the picture to access the blog.
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Tune of the Week: Allman Brothers 'Midnight Rider'...3:00 min
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Book Review: AOC and the Squad Explained
The Squad: AOC and the Hope of a Political Revolution by Ryan Grim, Macmillan Publishers (2023)
By Rod Such
Electronic Intifada
On 16 October last year, just over a week after Israel launched an openly declared genocidal assault on Gaza following the 7 October Hamas attack, Cori Bush, a Black congresswoman from St. Louis, introduced a resolution in the US House of Representatives calling for an immediate ceasefire.
A veteran of the Ferguson uprising against the police murder of Michael Brown and a longtime Palestine solidarity activist, Bush’s resolution was notable for a number of reasons. For one, it quickly gathered 17 co-sponsors in a congressional chamber previously known for slavishly genuflecting to the Israel lobby. For another, all the sponsors or co-sponsors were people of color. Not a single white representative in Congress signed on.
Among the 18 were the four original members of what has come to be known as the Squad, consisting of representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley and the only Palestinian-American member of Congress, Rashida Tlaib.
A squad in army parlance can consist of four to 10 soldiers, and a platoon consists of four squads. What became apparent on 16 October was that the Squad – at least on this issue – had become a platoon, consisting of people who had the lived experience of facing systemic racism and white supremacy.
Journalist Ryan Grim’s The Squad: AOC and the Hope of a Political Revolution lays the groundwork, since his account ends in 2022, for understanding how this significant political development came about. Grim, the Washington, DC bureau chief for The Intercept who previously reported for the HuffPost, brings a sympathetic perspective to the subject while managing to illuminate much about the myriad factions and divisions within the Democratic Party, especially when it comes to Palestine.
Cracks in the wall
For decades, Palestinian American and solidarity activists have confronted the virtually unanimous, bipartisan support Israeli apartheid and militarism have enjoyed in Congress. Many Israeli officials, most notably current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have long regarded the US Congress as a failsafe check on any pressure the executive branch might exert on Israel.
It has happened in rare cases that US foreign policy objectives in the Middle East have collided with Israeli interests, such as when President Barack Obama pushed for a nuclear accord with Iran while Netanyahu vehemently opposed it. In the period since 2016, however, when cracks in the wall first began to appear in this bipartisan support, those fissures have only widened.
An early example of the faltering influence of the Israel lobby appears in a widely reported revelation in Grim’s book: his disclosure that fresh off Ocasio-Cortez’s first election to Congress in 2018, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) offered her $100,000 just for a meeting, “with much more than that to come.” He relates that Ocasio-Cortez and her staff ignored the overture from AIPAC and both the congresswoman and her staff were amused by it, in part because she had won a solid victory without the Israel lobby giant, a perennial supporter of the incumbent she had just defeated.
But as Ocasio-Cortez’s term in office began, she quickly experienced firsthand the pervasiveness and power of the lobby’s influence within Congress, particularly the roles of its point persons.
The congresswoman had raised the ire of Josh Gottheimer, a representative from New Jersey who reportedly regarded the new progressives in Congress as anti-Semites and sought to block their committee appointments and legislative agendas. As it turns out, Grim notes, Gottheimer’s agenda closely dovetailed with corporate interests and opposition to the pro-union and other working-class issues that the Squad championed.
One of the more interesting insights provided in The Squad is Grim’s account of the emergence of the Democratic Majority for Israel (DMFI). That group was founded by a former AIPAC staffer and by all accounts was virtually indistinguishable from it, except that DMFI is devoted to standing up for Israel within the Democratic Party.
Grim highlights DMFI’s role in the notable primary defeat of Andy Levin, a representative from Michigan, in the 2022 Democratic primary elections. Levin considered himself a Zionist and opposed the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement advocating for Palestinian rights. But he offended DMFI by defending Omar and Tlaib from charges of anti-Semitism and by introducing legislation prohibiting the use of US aid to Israel for “efforts to annex or exercise permanent control over any part of the West Bank or Gaza.”
Grim notes, however, that Levin had also alienated many of the corporate backers funding DMFI with his prominent pro-labor activism. Marie Newman – the representative from neighboring Illinois who was also defeated in the 2022 primaries and was more closely aligned with the Squad – calls out this corporate role in the book: “DMFI, just to be clear, did not enjoy my pro-worker stance, my health equity stance. They did not like any of that, because it’s a very corporate group.”
Grim amplifies this point with a detailed account of the role played by cryptocurrency billionaires and private equity groups such as the firm Atlas Holdings and the finance capitalist Paul Singer in promoting and funding broader Israel lobby efforts.
DMFI and AIPAC also appear to be terrified of the concept of intersectionality and any hint of Black-Palestinian solidarity. The Squad dissects the campaigns of two Black women vying for congressional seats: Summer Lee, the Democratic Socialist activist from Pittsburgh, and Nina Turner, the former campaign co-chair for Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, a senator from Vermont.
Neither candidate was known as a vocal defender of Palestinian rights. Yet a single tweet by Lee linking the movement for Black lives with the struggle against injustice towards Palestinians was sufficient for DMFI to back her primary opponent. AIPAC raised the specter of her campaign to swell the coffers of its new political action committee, known as the United Democracy Project, by millions of dollars.
Lee had written on Twitter: “But as we fight against injustice here in the movement for Black lives, we must stand against injustice everywhere. Inhumanities against the Palestinian people cannot be tolerated or justified.”
Grim observes: “That was the extent of her public commentary on the question.”
In the end, what had looked like an easy victory for Lee, who at one time enjoyed a 25-point lead in the polls, turned into a narrow, under 1,000-vote victory. And what had appeared to be a runaway win for Nina Turner turned into a defeat in the special election primary of 2021, largely due to dark money spending by Israel lobby groups.
Even though much of the Israel lobby’s messaging against both Lee and Turner, through TV ads and other outlets, didn’t even mention their stands on Palestine, it was clear what motivated the Israel lobby.
What “worried me was her [Lee] equating the suffering of the Gazans and Palestinians to the suffering of African Americans,” Grim quotes a board member of the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle, arguably an information wing of the Israel lobby, as saying. “That’s one of these intersectional things. If that’s her take on the Middle East, that’s very dangerous.”
Under pressure
Equally dangerous, however, is the frequent equivocation, ignorance of Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians and apologetic reversals in position demonstrated by some members of the Squad as documented by Grim. The author shows how the Squad came under pressure from the Democratic Party leadership while also facing death threats from pro-Israel forces.
A prime example of backing down under pressure followed Omar’s response to a question about the Israel lobby when she declared “it’s all about the Benjamins,” slang for the $100 bill and a reference to a rap song by Puff Daddy. Accused of uttering an anti-Semitic trope about Jewish political influence being due to money, Omar quickly backed down and apologized without noting that numerous Jewish critics of Israel had expressed essentially the same critique without facing repercussions.
It’s a double standard numerous Black American political figures have faced over the years, most notably the 1979 forced resignation of United Nations ambassador and civil rights icon Andrew Young for arranging a secret meeting with a representative of the Palestine Liberation Organization. Even though Young had been told to meet with the PLO official, President Jimmy Carter asked him to resign after news of the meeting was leaked. Months earlier, a Jewish US diplomat had also made overtures to the PLO with no repercussions.
Numerous other examples of progressive candidates or officeholders backing down under pressure from the lobby and/or the Democratic Party establishment abound in The Squad.
Grim provides thorough accounts of opportunistic reversals in the campaigns of representatives Maxwell Frost of Florida and Greg Casar of Texas, and the unexpected stances regarding funding for Israel’s Iron Dome by Representative Ocasio-Cortez – who voted “present” after initially signaling opposition – and support for the funding by Representative Jamaal Bowman.
Interestingly, however, all four later co-sponsored the 2023 ceasefire resolution. And in response AIPAC reportedly expected to spend $100 million in the 2024 elections to defeat the ceasefire call initiators and others regarded as insufficiently supportive of Israel. By April 2024 CeasefireAction.com counted more than 170 members of Congress who support some form of ceasefire. Notably, at the same time, The New York Times reported that pro-Israel groups were spending less than expected to this point in the election cycle.
A sequel to The Squad is in order.
Rod Such is a former editor for World Book and Encarta encyclopedias. He lives in Portland, Oregon, where he is active in Palestine solidarity campaigns. ...Read More
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Film Review: Monkey Man
By Brian Tallerico
Rogerebert.com
April 04, 2024 - Dev Patel pours his entire self into “Monkey Man.” Some comes over the sides and the mix might not always be right but there’s an undeniable passion here that comes through in a genre that too often feels like it came off an assembly line.
The writer, producer, star, director, and guy who broke a few bones filming this one name-checked Bruce Lee, Sammo Hung, “The Raid,” Korean action, Bollywood, and much more in his intro, and “Monkey Man” often has that overstuffed quality of a filmmaker who finally got his chance to see his visions on-screen and worried he may never get to do so again.
With an insanely troubled production that started pre-Covid—Patel credited producer Jordan Peele with “saving” the film—there’s something miraculous about the existence of “Monkey Man,” and that unabashed passion can be contagious. When “Monkey Man” is humming, it earns those references in Patel’s intro. When it falters, those missteps can be forgiven as byproducts of the filmmaker’s unbridled desire to stand out from the other action movie primates.
Inspired by the legend of Hanuman, “Monkey Man” stars Patel as an unnamed fighter named ‘Kid’ in the credits. In the ring, he wears a gorilla mask and fights for money from a sleazy promoter played by Sharlto Copley. He is beaten most nights of the week, getting extra cash if he bleeds. With his deeply scarred hands and silent countenance, the Kid may not look like the strongest guy in the room, but Patel uses those incredibly expressive eyes early to convey drive. This young man has a goal. Nothing will stop him.
Through an act of thievery, the kid gets a job working at an exclusive club that attracts the most important power players in the city, including political leaders and the chief of police (Sikandar Kher) who destroyed his life. Faces in the supporting cast start to recur like a beautiful club worker (Sobhita Dhulipala) and a reluctant ally of sorts who gets caught up in the plan (Pitobash), but this is Patel’s movie. His character—in present or flashback—is in nearly every scene as we chart his ascendance from ordinary guy to killing machine.
On that last note, those coming to “Monkey Man” looking for non-stop action may be a little surprised by its structure. It’s basically a lengthy set-up followed by a lengthy action sequence, and then repeat. Other than the fight scenes and a lot of training, there are really only two action sequences in “Monkey Man,” but they’re worth the build-up. Patel has taken action templates from around the world and infused them with an insane brutality not often seen in films with a Hollywood studio logo. “Monkey Man” is bloody and intense. Bones break, blood spurts, and you feel the connection in ways you don’t often in action lately—even the good stuff has gone more “highly-choreographed” like “John Wick” or “Mission: Impossible.” While the choreography here is still phenomenal, there’s a sweaty, improvised quality to it that adds to its kinetic thrust. It’s impossible to look away or know what’s coming next. And credit to editors David Jancso & Tim Murrell and cinematographer Sharone Meir, who keeps his camera loose and fluid, almost like another fighter in the room.
While the action is impeccable, the film falters in other places. There are clearly political subtexts that others with more knowledge will be able to write and I couldn’t pretend to comprehend, but you don’t need to know the history or current troubles of India to tell that Patel the writer might have bitten off more than anyone could chew. Religion, mythology, equal rights, politics—it’s all woven through this story in a way that can feel clunky even to those who don’t know the details.
And Patel returns far too often to the flashbacks, using them as emotional ballast when he feels like the audience might be drifting between the action scenes. It’s funny because it almost feels like Patel the Director doesn’t trust Patel the Actor enough, putting so many flashbacks in to justify his mission. We can see the fearless drive in Patel’s body language and learn so much just from his eyes, which convey both the pain of memory and a commitment to vengeance at the same time.
While Patel’s editing team nails the fight sequences, there are parts of the non-action segments that feel unnecessarily hurried too, again trying to compensate in a way that keeps the audience awake when people aren’t getting mutilated. Patel doesn’t need to do that. He’s clearly a talent in front of and behind the camera. I have a feeling “Monkey Man” is going to be huge. And when he knows that he’s going to be able to make second, third, fourth, and beyond movies, he’ll hone that overstuffed storytelling and visual language in a way that could be legendary. “Monkey Man” may be an origin story for a future action franchise character, but it feels more to me like an origin story for a future action star and director.
This review was filed from the SXSW Film Festival. It opens on April 5th. ...Read More
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