Journal of the Plague Years

October 16, 2022

      It seems like our country is irretrievably broken.  Everywhere we turn, we see the full throated embrace of hatred and violence.  Anti-blackness has become so fashionable that Black people proudly sport it on the runway.  White supremacy is so widely seen as a ticket to power that Latinx elected officials casually dehumanize Black children while conspiring to deprive Black adults of political power.   The siren song of whiteness is so seductive that nearly 50% of us will forgive a corrupt vulgarian for fomenting insurrection and stealing state secrets because for them, whiteness trumps everything (pun intended).

      In such a scenario, despair seems not only understandable, but unavoidable.  We must remember that none of this is new. Kanye’s antics are a sideshow.  He is merely a troll mining the attention economy for money, and there have always been Black people willing to publicly work against the interests of Black people for profit.  The L.A. City Council is another matter entirely. It fits into a depressingly familiar pattern that Black people have seen again and again— that the quickest road to acceptance as a “true American” is to be virulently anti-Black.

      American history is replete with examples.  The Irish immigrants who fled famine and British persecution in the 1840’s were derided as criminal and subhuman by bigoted nativists. They were depicted as monkeys in newspaper cartoons and confined to the most menial jobs, (Source:  “When America Despised the Irish:  The 19th Century’s Refugee Crisis,” by Christopher Klein, History.com, (3/16/2017)).  

      Almost twenty years after their arrival as destitute refugees, Irish American New Yorkers erupted in a spasm of anti-Black violence that left 3000 Black New Yorkers homeless and caused millions of dollars in property damage.  In the years leading up to the Civil War, cotton represented 40% of the goods shipped out of New York’s ports and the city’s economy was dependent on the continuation of slavery.  Newspaper editors and politicians fomented white working class antipathy to abolition by warning that ending slavery would “flood the city with cheap” labor who would undercut white workers’ ability to earn a living, (Source: “White Riot:  Why The 1863 Draft Riots Matter Today,” by John Strausbaugh, The New York Observer, 7/11/2016). These fears were exacerbated by an 1857 recession that caused high unemployment.  

      When the Civil War began, some New Yorkers even considered seceding from the Union, rather than fighting on its behalf.  When President Lincoln passed a federal draft law in 1863 with a lottery that wealthy New Yorkers could buy their way out of, mobs of Irish Americans rioted, killing Black men, stringing their corpses up on lampposts and most notoriously, robbing the Colored Orphan Asylum on Fifth Avenue before burning it to the ground, (Source:  “New York Draft Riots,” by the editors of History.com, History.com, updated 9/6/2022).  

     Only 67 people were tried and convicted for their part in the New York Draft Riots and by the 1880’s Irish Americans, who had built a robust political machine that elected Irish American mayors in New York and Boston, “were considered acceptable and assimilable to the American way of life,” (Source:  “When America Despised the Irish,” citing “The Irish Americans:  A History,” by Jay P. Dolan).

     Successive waves of immigrants replicating this pattern led inexorably to where we are today— with a significant percentage of people who equate white supremacy with patriotism and believe, based on the evidence, that violent anti-Blackness will not be punished. Our only recourse is to elect people who will prove them wrong.  For some of us, it may be the difference between life and death.  We have 23 days.

#VOTERIDERS

#RECLAIMOURVOTE

#ACTBLUE

September 24, 2022

      Wednesday was bookended by two significant victories in the ongoing battle to hold Trump accountable.  Wednesday morning, New York Attorney General Tish James held a press conference to announce the filing of a massive civil suit against Trump, three of his four adult children and his company.  The 220 page complaint detailed more than 200 instances of alleged fraud, including multiple reported valuations for Trump properties that were wildly in excess of their appraised value, (Source:  “New York Attorney General Accuses Trump of Staggering Fraud in Lawsuit,” by Jonah E. Bromwich, William K. Rashbaum and Ben Protess, The NewYork Times, 9/21/22). 

One particularly egregious example was the valuation of Trump’s triplex apartment in Trump Tower. It went from a valuation of $80 million in 2011 to a purported valuation of $327 million in 2015 (Source:  People of the State of New York v. Donald J. Trump, et al, Complaint, pp 75-76).  The fourfold increase was supported by lying about both the size of the apartment (alleging that it was 30,000 square feet, rather than 11,000 and by quoting a price of $18,000 per square foot, far in excess of the $4459 per square foot that was the highest reported price per square foot in Trump Tower at the time, (Source:  ibid, pp.78-79).  

     The lawsuit seeks to permanently ban Trump and three of his adult children from serving as officers or directors of any New York State corporation or similar business entity, and to bar Trump and the Trump organization from applying for loans from any New York State financial institution or acquiring commercial real estate in New York for five years.  The complaint also demands disgorgement of fraudulently obtained financial benefit, estimated to be $250 million dollars, (Source:  ibid, pp 212-213).

      Then on Wednesday night, a three judge panel of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed Judge Aileen Cannon’s inexplicable ruling barring the Justice Department from reviewing 100 classified documents seized from Mar-a-Lago in its criminal investigation.  In its opinion, the 11th Circuit stated that it “cannot discern why [Trump] would have an individual interest in or need for any of the 100 documents with classification markings,” (Source:  “Appeals court:  Justice Department can use Mar-a-Lago documents in criminal probe,” by Devlin Barrett, The Washington Post, 9/21/22).

    These two legal developments are victories for the Rule of Law and bring Trump closer to suffering some consequence for his rampant criminality.  It is tempting to simply watch him squirm as his legal woes mount almost hourly, but we’ve known since January 6, 2021 that Trump is far from the only threat to our democracy.

      A thousand toxic flowers have bloomed since Trump harnessed the American id, all eager to carry on Trump’s project of stripping civil rights from every American who isn’t a straight, white Christian man and plunging them into misery.  We need look no further than to the governors of Texas and Florida.  Since May, Texas Governor Greg Abbott has shipped 11,000 migrants who arrive at the border to New York, without resources, information or notice to New York officials, forcing the city to scramble to accommodate them, (Source:  “Migrant Crisis Puts New York’s ‘Right to Shelter’ Law to the Test,” by Jeffery C. Mays, The New York Times, 9/15/22).

       Not to be outdone, on September 15th, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis chartered a private jet to fly 50 asylum seekers to Martha’s Vineyard.  His gambit to “expose liberal hypocrisy” failed spectacularly when the people of Martha’s Vineyard rushed to help the migrants, providing food, clothing, shelter and interpreters, (Source: “ ‘They enriched us.’  Migrants’ 44-hour stay leaves indelible mark on Martha’s Vineyard,” by Ray Sanchez, CNN.com, 9/18/22).  

      The gleeful sadism of Abbott and DeSantis is not confined to border states or the South.  Across the country, a dispiriting parade of elected officials and political candidates traffic in a noxious combination of conspiracy theories and hatred.  In “Blue” New Jersey, Democratic incumbent, Tom Malinowski is facing a tough race against Trump acolyte, Tom Kean, Jr., who hopes to use his famous father’s moderate reputation to hoodwink independent voters.  In Pennsylvania, Doug Mastriano, an actual insurrectionist who wore a Confederate uniform to an Army college reunion, campaigns on a platform of a total abortion ban.

     Threats to democracy can be found among the candidates in every state, at every level of government.  We can’t afford to sit back with popcorn watching Trump’s troubles mount like it’s another season of “Billions.”  Every one of us must spend the next six weeks working to defeat extremists like our freedom depends on it.  Whether we know it or not, it does.

#postcardstovoters.org

#PADems.com

#voteriders.org

#Votesaveamerica.com

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August 14, 2022

       Monday’s stunning raid on Mar-a-Lago jolted us out of our late summer torpor.  The prospect of Trump finally being held criminally liable for offenses too momentous to ignore has had us riveted.  As the week wore on, each of Trump’s blustery pronouncements was exposed as a lie and each of his bluffs was called. Merrick Garland used his reputation as a stolid  bureaucrat who moved at glacial pace to his advantage.  On Thursday Garland called a press conference to announce that he had  personally signed off on the search warrant and that the DOJ was petitioning the government to unseal it.

      When the warrant was unsealed on Friday, we learned that the FBI sought evidence of violations of violations of federal criminal statutes, 18 U.S.C. Sections 793, 2071, and 1519.  Section 793, known as the Espionage Act, prohibits “gathering, transmitting or losing” documents or information relating to national defense and is punishable by up to ten years in prison.  Section 2071 prohibits “concealment or removal”  of federal documents or records and carries a penalty of up to three years in prison.  Lastly, Section 1519 prohibits the “knowing concealment or falsification” of records or documents to “impede, obstruct, or influence”an investigation or the proper administration of the federal government and is punishable by a sentence of up to 20 years, (Source: Legal Information Institute, www.law.Cornell.edu).  These are not misdemeanors that can be dismissed as technical violations of the law. 

     While it has been satisfying to watch Trump and his apologists squirm, we cannot allow our preoccupation with Trump to blind us to both the empowering victories and ominous challenges that have emerged in the last several weeks.  Two weeks ago, Kansas voted overwhelmingly to protect abortion rights, defeating a measure that would have stripped it from the state constitution, (Source: “Kansans resoundingly reject measure designed to restrict abortion rights,” by Annie Gowan and Colby Itkowitz, The Washington Post, 8/3/22).

      The turnout of 900,000 was the highest in a primary in the state’s history with more than twice as voters as voted in 2018, (Source:  “4 charts that show just how big abortion won in Kansas,” by Rani Molla, Vox.com, 8/3/22).  Abortion rights won big in Kansas despite the fact that only 26% of its voters are Democrats.

     Three days later, as if in direct response, the Indiana legislature defiantly passed a law banning abortion except in cases of rape, incest, fatal fetal abnormality or “risk of death or severe health risk” to the mother,(Source:  “Indiana Governor Signs First Post-Roe Abortion Ban,” by Mitch Smith and Julie Bosman, The New York Times, 8/5/22).

     Democrats capped last week with another victory, by passing the Inflation Reduction Act, a law which will provide $300 billion to combat climate change, permit Medicare to bargain with drug makers to lower the cost of prescription drugs and compel corporations earning a billion dollars or more annually to pay a “15% minimum tax,” (Source:  “Democrats passed a major climate, health and tax bill.  Here’s what’s in it,” by Deepa Shivram, NPR.com, 8/7/22).

Yet, while Democrats were busy cajoling their eternal holdouts, Manchin and Sinema, to support this sweeping legislation that will protect the planet, improve the lives of American seniors and force corporations to begin paying their fair share of taxes, the Republicans’ alternate dystopian vision for America was playing out in primary elections around the country where Republicans elected far right radicals like Arizona’s Republican Senate candiate, Blake Masters and Trump backed Michigan gubernatorial candidate, Tudor Dixon.

      It played out in Dallas at last weekend’s CPAC convention, which hosted Hungarian autocrat, Viktor Orban, as its opening speaker.  Orban’s speech, a medley of hatemongers’ greatest hits, railed against “race-mixing” and “drag queens.”  Orban echoed the same themes he had hit in a July speech that prompted his close advisor, Zsuzsa Hegedus to resign in a scathing letter comparing Orban’s rhetoric to Nazi propagandist, Joseph Goebbels.  The CPAC audience, on the other hand, lapped it up, (Source:  “Republicans at CPAC embrace a defiant Viktor Orban amid outrage over ‘mixed-race’ remarks,” by Neil Vigdor, The New York Times, 8/4/22).

     The pattern is clear.  Every gain we achieve only strengthens their resolve.  While we should enjoy the spectacle playing out in South Florida and savor our victories, we cannot let it lull us into complacency.  Given Trump disciples like Abbott and DeSantis, who eagerly double down on his racism, misogyny and homophobia, holding Trump accountable for his crimes is necessary, but hardly sufficient.  Given Trump’s thousands of deranged foot soldiers in the Oathkeepers and the Proud Boys who are willing to violently attack the Capitol, elected officials or federal officers, even if, like Ricky Schiffer, they die in the attempt, it is rational to fear that our victories will be met with violence. We have to face that fear, because as Nelson Mandela said, “courage is not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it.”  Democracy deserves all the courage we can muster.

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July 7, 2022

     Independence Day has always been an ironic holiday, but none in recent memory have felt so much like a cruel cosmic joke.  It was never accurate to mark July 4th, 1776 as the anniversary of American freedom when “democracy” was only available to white male landowners, with Indigenous people marked for genocide, Black people for enslavement and white women no better than property.  Yet, at least since the middle of the last century, we could point to the grudging and gradual expansion of the American ideal to include more of us.

     In the last six years, the smug certainty of the inevitability of American progress towards greater freedom has been erased.  In its stead is a pervasive sense of dread, a creeping fear that the America of our youthful imagination—brash, hopeful, good hearted, has been replaced with something dark and sinister.  In the last two weeks, dread has been supplanted by full blown panic.

    Far too many of us are belatedly realizing that the autocratic impulse to subjugate and persecute the “other” is not limited by region, wealth or education.  It is a disease that has permeated this country since its founding, afflicting the powerful, privileged and pedigreed as much as the ignorant, “lower class” that we are so quick to disdain.

Some of us are just learning what the most marginalized among us have always known— we are a nation of men, not laws. While a few marginalized Americans ascend to the corridors of power to maintain the illusion of meritocracy, the minute there is a real chance that this country will become a true multiracial democracy— where women, BIPOC people, LGBTQIA people have full citizenship rights, the forces of racism and misogyny tighten the noose, metaphorically and literally.

     The truth is American independence has always been a myth.  We may have thrown off the yoke of British colonialism, but this nation has always been in thrall— to violence, greed and white supremacy.

     This crisis presents an opportunity to remove the shackles of the toxic mythology that have imprisoned us all.  Ignoring the poisonous roots of our country’s greatness  has only allowed the disease to fester and grow.  Unchecked violence cannot be contained by color or creed or zip code— it will not only strike elderly Black shoppers or Jewish people in a synagogue, but flag wavers at an Independence Day parade.  Overturning Roe won’t simply force Black and Latinx women to bear babies against their will, but will retraumatize a 10 year old child who has been raped.  Allowing six radicals in robes to jettison all principles of sound legal reasoning to establish their theocratic vision for this country doesn’t merely threaten women’s bodily autonomy, but our collective rights to clean air and water and ultimately, our guarantee of one person, one vote.

     None of us can afford to sit on the sidelines, waiting for the axe to fall on us.  As we reflect on this year’s Independence Day, let’s all resolve to fight for freedom— for each and every one of us.

#ExpandtheSupremeCourt

#Abolishthefilibuster

#Codifyvotingrights

#CodifyRoeNow

June 25, 2022

     Knowing that the Dobbs opinion was coming did nothing to lessen our shock and revulsion when it arrived.  Most of us have lived most or all of our lives with the belief that women had a Constitutionally guaranteed right to bodily autonomy.  Yet if we are being honest, that constitutional “right” has never applied equally to all women.

     In 1976, a mere three years after the Roe decision, Congress passed the Hyde amendment.  That amendment barred the use of federal funds for abortion, except in cases where the life of the mother was at stake.  It did not allow for exceptions in cases of rape or incest until 1993, meaning that poor women, who are disproportionately Black and Brown, have been denied this Constitutional “right,” since 1980, when the Hyde Amendment first took effect, (Source:  “The Hyde Amendment at 35:  lessons for activists,” by Marlene Gerber Fried, fundabortionnow.org, 9/26/11).

    Across the South and in parts of the Midwest, Republican-led states have long pushed the envelope to chip away at abortion access, imposing waiting periods and parental consent requirements that deprived increasing swaths of women of this “right.”  Several Republican-led states were so confident that this day would come that they passed trigger laws that would ban abortions in their states the moment that Roe was overturned, (Source:  “A state-by-state look at abortion laws in America,” Associated Press, 6/25/22).

     The pro-choice activists and BIPOC women who spent the last 49 years valiantly fighting for reproductive justice, warning that this day would come were derided as hysterical. They recognized that rights that were “conditional” weren’t rights at all.  Yet, far too many of us accepted right-wing framing, allowing Republicans to call themselves “pro-life,” failing to challenge Democrats who voted to reauthorize the Hyde amendment every year, tacitly agreeing that poor women aren’t entitled to abortions.  Far too many Americans did this because deep down, they 

believe that BIPOC and poor women are morally deficient people whose exercise of sexual agency is shameful and deserves to be punished.

     Yesterday the chickens came home to roost.  Every woman and person with a uterus has been told, in no uncertain terms, that we are lesser beings who are not entitled to the full scope of civil rights guaranteed to every American. 

     We know they won’t stop there.  The radical Christofascists on the Court are drunk with power and they’re not shy about using it.  In his concurring opinion, Clarence Thomas urged the Court to re-examine Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell, which protect access to contraception, same sex relationships and same sex marriage.  Tellingly, Thomas omitted the mention of Loving v. Virginia, the decision permitting interracial marriage, which rests on the same foundation of substantive due process as those other three decisions.

       We need not waste time criticizing the inconsistency between the Court’s decision in Dobbs, allowing states to curtail the fundamental right to bodily autonomy and its decision in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association the day before, forbidding states from passing laws that strictly regulate citizens’ ability to carry firearms in public as an impermissible incursion on their Second Amendment rights.  This Court has made clear that it is thoroughly unconcerned with doctrinal consistency, stare decisis, or institutional legitimacy.  They have evinced a single minded desire to establish authoritarian rule by a religious minority in America, enforced by violence.  That is the thread that runs through all of their decisions in the last week, including Vega v. Tekoh, holding that police officers cannot be sued for failing to give suspects Miranda warning, and Carson v. Makin, rejecting Maine’s ban on aid to religious schools.

     This is no time for timidity and half measures.  We must use every tool in our arsenal, which means not only flooding the streets in protest, but doing the painstaking, unglamorous work of organizing locally to control town councils, boards of education and election, state Supreme Courts and state legislatures.  It means helping women in states where abortion has been outlawed by donating to the National Network of Abortion Funds.  It means using tactics we haven’t even thought of yet, because we haven’t been here in 100 years.

     This last week should have dispelled any illusions about where we are as a country.  This is a battle for our future.  Will we be a white supremacist theocracy where white women are property, BIPOC people are lesser humans and LGBTQIA people don’t “exist”?  Or will we be a flawed democracy always striving for liberty and justice for all?  We’d better fight like hell for the future that we want.  The other side certainly is.

May 6, 2022

     Monday evening, while some of us were on Vogue.com, indulging in the opulent escapism of the Met Gala, Politico dropped the seismic bombshell of Justice Alito’s draft opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health.  The release revealed that a 5-4 majority of the Court was poised to overturn Roe v.Wade and strip women of their bodily autonomy, a right that has been guaranteed to us for nearly fifty years.

      The arrogance and contempt on display in Alito’s draft is stunning.  Alito’s absolutist reasoning is based on the shaky foundation that the right to abortion is not found anywhere in the Constitution, conveniently ignoring the text of the Ninth Amendment which states in full, “the enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”  Alito states that the applicable Constitutional provision is the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and invents a new test holding that the Fourteenth Amendment only protects those rights “deeply rooted in this Nation’s history,” and “implicit in the concept of ordered liberty,” (Source:  Draft Majority Opinion of Alito, J., citing Washington v. Glucksberg, 521 U.S. 702, 721, (1997), Politico.com, 5/2/22).

     By ignoring the Ninth Amendment and devising a new test that limits Constitutional rights to those enumerated specifically in the Constitution as they were understood at the time of the founding, Alito opens the door to the denial of any right not namechecked in 1791.  Of course, that is the point.  Ultra-conservatives have long hated the concept of “penumbral rights,” articulated in Griswold v. Connecticut, (S.Ct. 1965), the case which established the Constitutional right of privacy and permitted married people to obtain contraceptives.

      Alito’s dismissal of the Griswold line of cases allows him to invent a history test and rely on the absence of any mention of abortion rights in 19th Century cases and commentaries as evidence that it is not part of the concept of “ordered liberty,” that define the outer limits of individual rights. As Jill Lepore writes, “To use a history of discrimination to deny people their constitional rights is a perversion of logic and a betrayal of justice,” (Source: “Of Course The Constitution Has Nothing To Say About Abortion,” by Jill Lepore, The New Yorker, 5/4/22).

     The history of late 20th Century Constitutional jurisprudence has been one of a gradual expansion of the polity to include those previously excluded—women, Black people and LGBTQ people.  Jettisoning the Griswold line of cases and substituting Alito’s “history test” endangers Obergefell v. Hodges, (marriage equality), Lawrence v. Texas, (right to engage in private consensual sex acts), Loving v. Virginia, (interracial marriage).  A history test would endanger Brown v. Board of Education, since equal rights for Black people are hardly “deeply rooted in our nation’s history.

       This is not a drill.  Alito’s opinion does not simply destroy women’s bodily autonomy and relegate us to noncitizen status.  It is also a roadmap for the erasure of the rights of “discrete and insular minorities” to allow Christofascists to impose their cramped and punitive worldview on us all.  We can’t afford to sit back wringing our hands in despair.  We have to help the very real women who will be harmed by this decision and donate to abortion funds to allow women to travel to states where abortion will still be legal.  We have to hit the streets in protest and loudly proclaim that we refuse to go back to the world of back alley abortions that killed us. We must mobilize to elect Democrats in Blue states and fight voter suppression in Red ones so that we can pass federal legislation protecting reproductive freedom and expanding the Supreme Court.  In other words, we have to use every one of our Constitutional rights…while we still have them.

In Our Own Voice:  Black Women’s Reproductive Justice Agenda

National Network of Abortion Funds

Indivisible

April 16, 2022

      T.S. Eliot wrote that “April is the cruelest month,” and by any measure, that seems to be true.  It is hard to resist being crushed under the weight of unrelenting grim news.  Russia, frustrated by its failure to conquer Ukraine in a matter of days, has escalated its genocidal campaign to level the country and erase its people. Russia has repeatedly shown its blatant disregard for international law and contempt for humanity, bombing a train station in Kramatorsk last Friday that was packed with women, children and elderly people seeking to evacuate.  Fifty civilians were killed, including two children and 300 people were injured, (Source:  “A missile strike in eastern Ukraine kills 50 people waiting for trains to escape the fighting,” by Megan Specia and Michael Levenson, The New York Times, 4/8/22).  

      This past week, a terrorist with a Glock boarded a rush hour train in Sunset Park and set off two smoke bombs before firing 33 bullets.  Miraculously, although 10 people were shot and 19 people injured, no one died.  It is notable that the officers in the subway at the time failed to prevent the crime, or apprehend the suspect before he boarded a train across the platform.  Frank James was arrested 29 hours later thanks to an eagle eyed Syrian immigrant, Zack Tahhan, who spied James in the McDonald’s next to the bodega where Tahhan worked.  James also apparently called the tip line himself to alert the authorities to his location.  Remember these facts when we’re told that more police officers are the solution to rising crime, (Source: “Suspect in Brooklyn subway train shooting called in the tip that led to his arrest, sources say,” by Brynn Gingras, Shimon Prokupecz, Pervais Shallwani,  Artemis Moshtagian, Laura Ly, Kristina Sgueglia, Eric Levenson and Mark Morales, CNN.com, 4/13/22).

       Earlier this week, Oklahoma voted to criminalize abortion, passing a law that makes performing or having an abortion a felony punishable by up to ten years in prison (Source:  “Oklahoma governor signs near-total ban on abortion,” by Paul LeBlanc and Veronica Stracqualursi, CNN.com, 4/12/22).  Not to be outdone, Thursday, the Kentucky state legislature overrode Democratic Governor Andy Beshear’s veto to pass a law that immediately shut down all access to abortion in the state of Kentucky, (Source:  “It’s now practically impossible to get an abortion in Kentucky,” by Nicole Narea, Vox.com, 4/14/22).

     Faced with depressing proof that the barbaric impulse to dominate others through murder and persecution knows no borders, it is easy to forget that it has only been a week since the uplifting South Lawn celebration of the vote to confirm Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s nomination to be the first Black woman to serve on the United States Supreme Court.  It is easy to forget Judge Jackson’s recognition that her family “took just one generation to go from segregation to the Supreme Court” and to forget that it was our Herculean organizing efforts to elect Joe Biden and two Democratic Georgia Senators that made that moment possible.

      It is easy to forget that less than a month ago, a small band of workers led by two Black men, won their battle to unionize Amazon’s JFK8 warehouse.  Despite the Amazon lawyer’s dismissal of leader Chris Smalls as “not smart or articulate,” despite being outspent by more than 20 to 1, Chris Smalls and his best friend, Derrick Palmer defied conventional wisdom and established the independent Amazon Labor Union.  Smalls and Palmer succeeded because they were undeterred by Amazon’s derision and staunch opposition.  They won over their co-workers by building bonfires to warm them as they waited for buses home, bringing them home cooked food, and fundraising for a co-worker who was in danger of becoming homeless, (Source: “How Two Best Friends Beat Amazon,” by Jodi Kantor and Karen Weise, The New York Times, 4/2/22).

    Now, more than ever, it is critical that we not give in to cynicism and despair.  Now, more than ever, we all must commit to standing up for one another and actively resisting injustice, whether we are personally affected or not.  The confirmation of Justice Jackson and the victory of the Amazon workers is a timely reminder that we should “never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed it’s the only thing that ever has.”

March 18, 2022

     For more than three weeks now, we have watched in impotent despair as Russia has assaulted Ukraine, literally trying to bomb it into submission.  Frustrated by Ukrainians’ steadfast refusal to surrender their sovereignty and embarrassed by ground forces beset by ineptitude and morale problems, Russia has resorted to targeting civilians for death and destruction, indiscriminately bombing hospitals, theaters and apartment buildings.

    Confronted by barbarism on such a massive scale, we all want to do something, yet whatever we can actually do seems puny in response.  The blue and yellow lights on buildings and bridges in foreign capitals are cold comfort to the 3 million refugees with nowhere to live.  Armchair military strategists call for a “No Fly Zone,” blithely dismissing the folly of provoking a hot war with the country with the largest nuclear stockpile in the world.

      There are no easy answers. While the United States and the European Union have shown admirable unity, getting arms to Ukraine and imposing punishing economic sanctions to isolate Russia, Russian attacks on civilians have only escalated.  After decades of happily allowing Russian oligarchs to purchase yachts, luxury real estate and football clubs with their ill-gotten gains, the West is finally saying that the cost of this blood money is too high, (Source:  “ Abramovich flies into Moscow as yachts are seized and caviar banned in hit to Russia’s rich,” by Catarina Demony, Francesco Guariscio, and Ali Kucukgocmen, Reuters.com, 3/15/22). 

     Last week, President Biden banned the importation of Russian oil and gas.  Sadly rather than using this opportunity to aggressively embrace renewable energy and address climate change, the administration announced that it would entertain purchasing oil from Venezuela and Saudi Arabia, two countries with abysmal human rights records, (Source:  “Biden announces ban on Russian energy imports,” by Kaitlan Collins, Jeremy Diamond, Kevin Liptak, Phil Mattingly, MJ Lee and Kate Sullivan, CNN.com, 3/8/22).

      In fairness to Biden, that decision was probably driven as much by pragmatism as by shortsightedness. After all, a nation in which nearly half of the people rejected the mild inconvenience of wearing a mask to halt the spread of a deadly pathogen could not be counted on to endure sacrifice for a nation of people half a world away.

       Yet, if we are unable to take action that decisively ends this horrific war and preserves Ukrainian sovereignty, it provides an opportunity for us to reflect on what America has become and what we truly want it to be. We are transfixed by the courage and selflessness of Volodymyr Zelenskyy because we are awash in politicians who only seek office to gain undeserved fame or the power to persecute (and sometimes both).  Even the few who genuinely seek to serve the public are unwilling to risk re-election, let alone their lives, to do so.

      Americans feel vicariously ennobled by the actions of ordinary Ukrainians who are taking up arms to preserve the things we say we stand for, but here in America, we use AK-47s to deprive people of freedom, not to fight for it.  Our most watched cable news show is hosted by a white supremacist Putin apologist.  We sit on our hands as state after state passes laws depriving Black and Brown people of the right to vote.  Last week, the Florida legislature approved the creation of an “election police force” to address the nonexistent crime of voter fraud.  Texas threw out an alarming 13% of mail-in ballots in its primary this month, thanks to strict new voter suppression laws.  Meanwhile, those already in office use their power to criminalize gender affirming healthcare for transgender youth and ban them from participating in school sports, effectively trying to legislate them out of existence.

     So yes, we should applaud the brave citizens of Ukraine.  We should condemn Putin as a murderous autocrat who is committing war crimes.  By all means we should give generous assistance to Ukrainian refugees, and while we’re at it, welcome and assist non-European refugees fleeing autocracy and persecution.  Yet, as Americans simultaneously cheer the brave people of Ukraine, while maintaining a stunning silence in the face of escalating attacks on democracy at home, we have to ask, “Do we only cheer democracy when everyone who stands to benefit is white?”

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February 21, 2022

     These are demoralizing days. For the last several weeks, we have been living with the threat of impending World War, as Putin escalates the number of troops surrounding Ukraine and lies about it. Black History Month has been marked by book bans and the prohibition of the very teaching of Black History.  Then, on Friday, we received a stark reminder that the quickest way to prove your “patriotism” in this country is to display utter contempt for Black people.

    How else can we explain the appalling performance of Judge Regina Chu in the sentencing of Kim Potter.  Potter, a Brooklyn Center, Minnesota veteran police officer was convicted of first and second degree manslaughter in the killing of 20 year old Daunte Wright over a traffic stop.  Judge Chu sentenced Potter to a mere two years, one third of the minimum recommended sentence for the crime that she committed. The Judge choked up while delivering a slap on the wrist to the officer who recklessly took Daunte Wright’s life. Clearly Judge Chu was more pained by the thought of imposing any accountability on Potter for killing  Daunte Wright, than by the loss suffered by Daunte’s mother, father and child, (Source:  “Family:  Judge in Potter case swayed by ‘white woman tears,’” by Steve Karnowski, Associated Press, abcnewsgo.com, 2/19/22).

     Potter’s light sentence can be seen as just the latest example of privileging white comfort over Black lives, but in truth, it is evidence of a much darker fact of American history.  For most of this country’s history there was simply no consequence for the taking of a Black person’s life.  For our first 244 years on this continent, we were considered property with no rights of our own.  After the Civil War, the brief glimmer of hope that we might flourish as equal citizens thanks to the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments was extinguished by the withdrawal of federal troops from the South in 1877 and the passage of Jim Crow laws throughout the former Confederacy.

     It took nearly 100 years and murder of Black people and their white allies for Black people to gain the most basic of civil rights.  The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was only passed after the brutal assaults on the Edmund Pettus Bridge were broadcast on the evening news, (Source:  “How Selma’s Bloody Sunday Became A Turning Point in the Civil Rights Movement,” by Christopher Klein, History.com, 3/6/15, updated 7/18/20).  It took the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King to pass the Fair Housing Act in 1968, (Source:  “The Fair Housing Act was languishing in Congress.  Then Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed,” by DeNeen L. Brown, The Washington Post, 4/11/18).

     Despite purchasing a modest measure of equality through bloodshed, the backlash was immediate.  In 1968, Richard Nixon harnessed white fear and resentment to capture the presidency.  Nixon understood that many white Americans viewed civil rights for Black Americans as a “zero-sum equation, with African-American gains translating into white losses,” (Source:  “How Richard Nixon captured white rage— and laid the groundwork for Donald Trump,” by Scott Laderman, The Washington Post, 11/3/19).

    Republicans have used this strategy to secure electoral victory ever since, eroding more and more of the gains won in the movements for equal rights with each successive administration.  They know that the success of this approach depends upon keeping white Americans in a constant state of fear, anger and ignorance.  The erasure of actual American history is a linchpin of their strategy.  The summer of 2020 showed that exposure to the truth of how this country has treated its Black, indigenous, Latinx and Asian citizens galvanized a majority of Americans to take action to push for a more egalitarian society.

     The propaganda campaign we have witnessed in the last two years is the direct result.  It began with Trump’s Executive Order establishing a “1776 Commission” to rebut The 1619 Project, continued with Christopher Rufo’s assault on Critical Race Theory and has reached its crescendo in the proliferation of laws seeking to ban teaching about racism and bias.  The truth is, in the fight for a multicultural democracy, knowledge is our greatest weapon.  We can’t afford not  to use it.

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