The 1619 Project Examines the Legacy of Slavery in America
The New York Times – August 19, 2019 – Mary Elliott and Jazmine Hughes
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/19/magazine/history-slavery-smithsonian.html
Four hundred years after enslaved Africans were first brought to Virginia, most Americans still don’t know the full story of slavery.
Econ 3.0? What economists can contribute to (and learn from) the pandemic
MIT Technology Review – September 28, 2020 – Luohan Academy
https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/09/28/1008985/econ-3-0-what-economists-can-contribute-to-and-learn-from-the-pandemic/
The rush of stimulus spending by developed world governments has emboldened development economists to call for a reconsideration of public sector financing… Covid-19 has triggered economists to rethink their profession all the way from the philosophical down to the practical. This is no mere academic exercise—the pandemic has shown us that citizen welfare, economic recovery, and future resilience are at stake.
Sir David Attenborough warns world leaders over extinction crisis
BBC – September 28, 2020 – Helen Briggs
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-54329813
He made his plea as 65 heads of state and government, including the UK’s, signed a global pledge to reverse losses in the natural world by 2030. Addressing the virtual United Nations event, he said world leaders had a chance to make a difference. A recent BBC documentary, presented by Sir David, issued a stark warning about the extinction crisis and its effects. “If ever we needed a strong signal from world leaders, for people like you, that we are going to solve this, then this is now,” he told the delegates.
Trump Thinks His Attempts to Steal the Election Are Rip-Roaringly Hilarious
Vanity Fair – September 25, 2020 – Bess Levin
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/09/donald-trump-2020-election-laughs#
As you’ve likely heard by now, Donald Trump has spent months trying to undermine confidence in the election, a plot that reached a crescendo this week when he refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power and called for “the ballots” to be thrown out so that he can just be declared the winner. Obviously, the remarks were deeply disturbing to people who don’t want to live under an authoritarian regime reminiscent of Turkmenistan. But for Trump? Well, apparently he thought they were a real gas.
Trump’s Tax Returns Have Exposed Him as a Massive Failure Who Thrived in the Age of Plutocracy
Esquire Magazine – September 28, 2020 – Charles P. Pierce
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a34192749/trump-tax-returns-failure-plutocracy/
He had prided himself on never having met a public official, a banker, a lawyer, a reporter, or a prosecutor he couldn’t seduce. Some he owned, and others he merely manipulated. As he saw it, it was not just that everyone had a price, it was that he knew what the price was. He believed he could look across a table and compute the price, then move on to another table and borrow the money to pay it. “Everybody tries to get some money” was his assessment in one unpublished interview of what motivates the people he dealt with. It was his one-sentence summary of human nature… The Times report is the final and conclusive evidence that everything the president* has sold about himself to his business partners, his lackeys in the press, his bankers, the Republican Party and, ultimately, the country, is the purest moonshine. He stands exposed now as a massive failure. As a businessman, he’s a debt-ridden mess, deeply in hock to God alone knows who. As a president*, he has set new standards for incompetence that may well stand for centuries, assuming the country does, of course.
Amid Talk of Civil War, America Is Already Split – Trump Nation Has Seceded
The Guardian – September 27, 2020 – Robert Reich
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/27/donald-trump-american-civil-war-joe-biden-republicans-democrats-robert-reich
Trump came to office with no agenda except to feed his monstrous ego. He has never fueled his base. His base has fueled him. Its adoration sustains him. So does the antipathy of his detractors. Presidents usually try to appease their critics. Trump has gone out of his way to offend them. “I do bring rage out,” he unapologetically told Bob Woodward in 2016. In this way, he has turned America into a gargantuan projection of his own pathological narcissism.
Trump’s Stalinist Approach to Science
The New York Times – September 24, 2020 – Paul Krugman
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/24/opinion/trump-science-coronavirus.html
While nobody would accuse Trump of being a leftist, his political style always reminds me of Stalinism. Like Stalin, he sees vast, implausible conspiracies everywhere — anarchists somehow in control of major cities, radical leftists somehow controlling Joe Biden, secret anti-Trump cabals throughout the federal government. It’s also notable that those who work for Trump, like Stalinist officials, consistently end up being cast out and vilified — although not sent to gulags, at least not yet. And Trumpism, like Stalinism, seems to inspire special disdain for expertise and a fondness for quacks.
Unredacted FBI Document Sheds New Light on White Supremacist Infiltration of Law Enforcement
The Intercept – September 29, 2020 – Alice Speri
https://theintercept.com/2020/09/29/police-white-supremacist-infiltration-fbi/
“Having personnel within law enforcement agencies has historically been and will continue to be a desired asset for white supremacist groups seeking to anticipate law enforcement interest in and actions against them,” the report notes in a section that was previously redacted. Another previously redacted section warned of “factors that might generate sympathies among existing law enforcement personnel and cause them to volunteer their support to white supremacist causes,” which could include hostility toward developments in U.S. domestic and foreign policies “that conflict with white supremacist ideologies,” the report warns.
Trump Refuses to Denounce White Supremacy in Chaotic Debate
ABC News – September 30, 2020 – Ivan Pereira
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-denounce-white-supremacists-militias-debate/story?id=73330093
Moderator Chris Wallace brought up the militias and hate groups during the part of the debate focused on “law and order,” and asked the president if he would call on those groups to end their violence. During an Aug. 25 protest in Kenosha, Wisconsin, following the shooting of Jacob Blake, an Illinois teen who was allegedly part of a militia, shot three protesters, killing two, according to police… “Who would you like me to condemn? Who? Proud Boys, stand back and stand by,” Trump said, referring to the far-right group that has been linked to violent attacks across the country. “Somebody has got to do something about antifa.”
Who are the Proud Boys?
The Boston Globe – September 30, 2020 – John R. Ellement
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/09/30/metro/proud-boys-group-no-stranger-controversy-violence/
To the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League, the group created by alt-right activist Gavin McInnes is a hate group that uses violence to push an ideological agenda considered “misogynistic, Islamophobic, transphobic and anti-immigration” as well as “white supremacist and anti-Semitic” as the ADL wrote in its summary of the group.
What Is Antifa?
The New York Times – September 28, 2020 – Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs and Sandra E. Garcia
https://www.nytimes.com/article/what-antifa-trump.html
Supporters generally seek to stop what they see as fascist, racist and far-right groups from having a platform to promote their views, arguing that public demonstration of those ideas leads to the targeting of marginalized people, including racial minorities, women and members of the L.G.B.T.Q. community. “The argument is that militant anti-fascism is inherently self-defense because of the historically documented violence that fascists pose, especially to marginalized people,” said Mark Bray, a history lecturer at Rutgers University and the author of “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook.”
Why ‘Stand Back and Stand By’ Should Set Off Alarm Bells
The New York Times – October 2, 2020 – Kathleen Belew
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/02/opinion/trump-proud-boys.html
The white power movement is, in many ways, an incredibly diverse array of activists. I found in my research that though it is a fringe movement, its supporters represent a cross-section of American life: rich and poor and middle class; religious leaders and felons; men and women and children; people in cities and suburbs and rural areas. What binds these disparate groups is that they espouse the violent defense of white supremacy. They see the white race as under attack — from immigration, from the rise of the nonwhite population, and from the acceptance of multiculturalism by much of the nation. For them, defending the white race and white culture from these forces requires a violent attempt to stop the country’s demographic changes. Some of them wish to provoke race war, overthrowing the nation itself. Others simply wish to attack immigrants and keep people of color from voting… We are decades, if not generations, into this problem. A call to arms like “stand back and stand by” is nothing less than catastrophic.
A Pro-Trump Militant Group Has Recruited Thousands of Police, Soldiers, and Veterans
Atlantic Magazine – October 1, 2020 (November 2020 issue) – Mike Giglio
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/11/right-wing-militias-civil-war/616473/
Stewart Rhodes was living his vision of the future. On television, American cities were burning, while on the internet, rumors warned that antifa bands were coming to terrorize the suburbs. Rhodes was driving around South Texas, getting ready for them. He answered his phone. “Let’s not fuck around,” he said. “We’ve descended into civil war.”… Rhodes had been talking about civil war since he founded the Oath Keepers, in 2009. But now more people were listening. And whereas Rhodes had once cast himself as a revolutionary in waiting, he now saw his role as defending the president. He had put out a call for his followers to protect the country against what he was calling an “insurrection.” The unrest, he told me, was the latest attempt to undermine Donald Trump… The Oath Keepers did not have 25,000 soldiers at the ready. But the files showed that Rhodes had tapped into a deep current of anxiety, one that could cause a surprisingly large contingent of people with real police and military experience to consider armed political violence. He was like a fisherman who sinks a beacon into the sea at night, drawing his catch toward the light.
A second Trump term would be ‘game over’ for the climate, says one of the world’s top climate scientists
The Guardian – October 2, 2020 – Mark Hertsgaard
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/oct/02/donald-trump-climate-change-michael-mann-interview
“If we are going to avert ever more catastrophic climate change impacts, we need to limit warming below a degree and a half Celsius, a little less than three degrees Fahrenheit,” Mann said. “Another four years of what we’ve seen under Trump, which is to outsource environmental and energy policy to the polluters and dismantle protections put in place by the previous administration … would make that essentially impossible.”
Trump, COVID-19, and America’s sickness
The Boston Globe – October 2, 2020 – Joan Vennochi
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/10/02/opinion/trump-covid-19-americas-sickness/
Trump’s positive COVID-19 test may be a political October surprise. But you don’t have to be an epidemiologist to know that medically speaking, it’s not all that shocking…. Trump infamously played down the risks for Americans, and for himself, too. This is a president who just the other night, on the presidential debate stage in Cleveland, mocked Democratic challenger Joe Biden for always wearing a mask. He said there were no negative effects from indoor rallies — somehow forgetting former Republican presidential candidateHerman Cain, who attended a Trump rally in Tulsa, Okla., and died weeks later, in July, of COVID-19. After Hope Hicks, Trump’s close aide, tested positive for COVID-19, Trump and his entourage still flew to New Jersey on Thursday, where he attended a fund-raiser at his golf club and delivered a speech. He was in close contact with dozens of other people, The Washington Post reported.
Biggest Irony of 21st Century: Was GOP Elite sickened at Barrett fête while Plotting to end Americans’ Health Care?
Informed Comment – October 3, 2020 – Juan Cole
https://www.juancole.com/2020/10/sickened-plotting-americans.html
If the Democrats take the White House and the Senate, they need to craft revisions to the ACA that allow the unemployed to get affordable health care, and the ACA needs to be redone so that its cost doesn’t depend on the cooperativeness of Republican governors and state legislators. And they need to assert themselves against the 6-3 conservative Supreme Court to prevent unelected lifetime nominees of the far right Federalist Society from ruining the lives of tens of millions of Americans.
ALL OF US
Reader Supported News – October 1, 2020 – Bernie Sanders
https://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/65441-rsn-all-of-us
Yes. This is the most important election in the modern history of our country. It is absolutely critical we do all we can to defeat Donald Trump, the most dangerous president in modern American history. ALL OF US have a role to play in the final month of this election. Let me tell you what I and our movement have been doing.
The University of Cambridge just raised the bar on fossil fuel divestment
The Grist – October 1, 2020 – Emily Pontecorvo
https://grist.org/climate/the-university-of-cambridge-just-raised-the-bar-on-fossil-fuel-divestment-harvard-yale/
The University of Cambridge is upping the ante for the fossil fuel divestment movement. The 811-year-old British institution announced on Thursday that it not only plans to divest its $4.5 billion endowment from fossil fuels — it also aims to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions across its investment portfolio. That means even after it has sold off all of its investments in fossil fuel companies, it will continue to try to reduce its holdings in companies that emit greenhouse gases, or engage with them to reduce their emissions, and then offset any remaining carbon pollution tied to its investments. While Cambridge joins a growing cadre of universities, faith groups, pension funds, cities, and even countries divesting from fossil fuels, its two-pronged approach is a first.
Philly Activists Reclaim 50 Vacant Houses
Democracy Now! – September 29, 2020 – Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor interviewed
https://www.democracynow.org/2020/9/29/keeanga_yamahtta_taylor_philadelphia_housing
In a historic victory for unhoused people, Philadelphia city officials agreed to hand over 50 vacant homes to a community land trust, following months of organizing and protest encampments. We hear from one of the organizers and speak to Philadelphia-based Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, who has written extensively about housing insecurity and says the direct actions there are applicable across the U.S. “This dynamic exists all over the country where you have both empty housing and houseless people, a completely irrational expression of what American capitalism means,” Taylor says. The sustained movement in Philadelphia established “a model for what all tenant organizing and activist groups should be taking up, which is occupy the space, occupy the properties and put political pressure on public housing authorities to do their job and house people that are unhoused.”
California to consider slavery reparations after landmark law passed
The Guardian – September 30, 2020 – Vivian Ho
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/sep/30/california-slavery-reparations-law
“As a nation, we can only truly thrive when every one of us has the opportunity to thrive,” Gavin Newsom, California’s governor, said in a statement. “California’s rich diversity is our greatest asset, and we won’t turn away from this moment to make right the discrimination and disadvantages that Black Californians and people of color still face.”
Socialists Don’t Want to Destroy Liberalism. We Want to Go Beyond It.
Jacobin – October 2, 2020 – Matt McManus
https://jacobinmag.com/2020/10/socialism-liberalism-marx
Socialists’ goal isn’t to destroy liberalism, but to transcend its limitations — pairing civil liberties and other liberal rights with a democratic, egalitarian foundation that makes those rights real… One of the big questions of twenty-first-century politics is whether liberalism has gone far enough in achieving equality for all, or whether more fundamental transformation must occur to establish a just society. The answer for socialists is an emphatic “yes.”… Many of the basic features of the liberal state should be maintained and expanded, from rights to expression, association, and religion to protection from cruel and unusual punishment and equal treatment under the law. The point is not to destroy liberalism, but to unbound it from its historic association with capitalism in order to transcend its limitations… Socialists should seek to build bridges by stressing our shared commitment to moral equality and freedom, while arguing that those are best preserved and deepened in what might be called a liberal socialist state.
Is 2020 the Opening for a Just Transition?
Yes! Magazine – September 29, 2020 – Breanna Draxler
https://www.yesmagazine.org/environment/2020/09/29/just-transition/
The recognition of the unique potential for a just transition in this historical moment isn’t limited to left-leaning organizers and think tanks, either. United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres recently acknowledged as much in an interview with Covering Climate Now. “I don’t want to go back to a world where biodiversity is being put into question, to a world where fossil fuels receive more subsidies than renewables, or to a world in which we see inequalities making societies with less and less cohesion and creating instability, creating anger, creating frustration,” Guterres said. “I think we need to have a different world, a different normal, and we have an opportunity to do so.” The concept is gaining traction at speed, but that doesn’t mean a just transition is going to be an easy process. The hurdles to achieving this transition are myriad, from entrenched systemic inequality to a global obsession with capitalism that sees even co-occurring planetary trauma like climate change, the pandemic, and racial injustice as potential boosts to the bottom lines of transnational corporations… “We’ve got to make sure that infrastructure means renewables, a regenerative economy, and not just more of the same extractive practices.” And in the process, we need to make sure those communities originally built around fossil fuels are supported with new, stable, wealth-building opportunities.