Carol Anderson on the Racist Roots of the Constitutional Right to Bear Arms
Democracy Now! – June 3, 2021 – interview Carol Anderson, author “The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America”
https://www.democracynow.org/2021/6/3/carol_anderson_second_amendment
That a well-regulated militia being necessary for the defense of the state, the people’s rights to bear arms. This has been the subject of one of the greatest pieces of fraud — I repeat the word “fraud” — on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime… that fraud has been that swaddling of the Second Amendment in the flag, in patriotism, in a sense of — that the militias were there to protect and defend democracy, when in fact the militia were there, designed to control Black people and deny Black people their rights. So, in the Second Amendment, what we have in the Bill of Rights is the right to destroy Black people’s rights.
The Deep Downward Spiral of Police Violence and Rebellion, Explained
In These Times – May 27, 2021 – Hamilton Nolan
https://inthesetimes.com/article/elizabeth-hinton-america-on-fire-police-violence-rebellion
No scholar in America understands the roots of the past year’s anti-police protests better than Yale professor and historian Elizabeth Hinton. Her first book, “From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime: The Making of Mass Incarceration in America,” explored the political and policy roots that led to our era of mass incarceration. Her new book, “America on Fire: The Untold History of Police Violence and Black Rebellion Since the 1960s,” examines the underlying causes of police brutality and the rebellions against it by Black Americans over the past 50 years… There’s been an ongoing resistance to really making the structural changes that are necessary for solving these problems at their root.
You Should Learn the Truth About the Tulsa Race Massacre
The New York Times – June 4, 2021 – Tom Hanks
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/04/opinion/tom-hanks-tulsa-race-massacre-history.html
For all my study, I never read a page of any school history book about how, in 1921, a mob of white people burned down a place called Black Wall Street, killed as many as 300 of its Black citizens and displaced thousands of Black Americans who lived in Tulsa, Okla. My experience was common: History was mostly written by white people about white people like me, while the history of Black people — including the horrors of Tulsa — was too often left out… How different would perspectives be had we all been taught about Tulsa in 1921, even as early as the fifth grade? Today, I find the omission tragic, an opportunity missed, a teachable moment squandered… Should our schools now teach the truth about Tulsa? Yes, and they should also stop the battle to whitewash curriculums to avoid discomfort for students. America’s history is messy but knowing that makes us a wiser and stronger people.
It was much more than Tulsa
The Washington Post – May 31, 2021 – Eugene Robinson
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/05/31/it-was-much-more-than-tulsa/
No one should be under the impression that the burning of “Black Wall Street” in Tulsa a century ago was a one-off atrocity. In fact, it was part of a long and shameful pattern in which White mobs used murderous violence to erase African American prosperity… It happened in Atlanta in September 1906… It happened in East St. Louis, Ill., in the summer of 1917… It happened in Chester, Pa., that same year… And it happened in two dozen cities across the country in 1919, during what came to be known as the “Red Summer.”… Tulsa may have been the worst of the early-20th-century race riots — and that’s what “race riot” meant in those days, a pogrom by Whites against African Americans — but it was part of a familiar pattern… The point is this: There are those who deny that anything called “systemic racism” is a feature of the American landscape. They should be aware that history tells a very different story.
The Fight for Voting Rights Is a Fight for Justice
Reader Supported News – Bernie Sanders’ Facebook Page – June 5, 2021
https://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/69752-focus-the-fight-for-voting-rights-is-a-fight-for-justice
What we are seeing today is déjá vu all over again. As a nation, we have seen this all before. The approach today may take a slightly different form, but the goal is exactly the same as it was before the passage of the Voting Rights Act. Political cowards are doing everything they can to keep people from voting. They are making it harder for people to register and to participate in the political process. This attempted curtailing of our electoral democracy should offend the very conscience of every American. The fight for voting rights is a fight for justice. It is inseparable from the struggle for democracy itself.
The Time to Secure Voting Rights Is Now or Never
Yes! Magazine – June 3, 2021 – Chris Winters
https://www.yesmagazine.org/opinion/2021/06/03/voting-rights-voter-suppression-bills
What used to be a cold war against democracy has become a conflagration spreading across the U.S. As of May 14, the Brennan Center has counted nearly 400 voter suppression bills that have been introduced in 48 statehouses across the country, many of which are getting passed. Some of the more draconian bills are being enacted in states like Texas, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, and Arizona—key battleground states that can swing presidential elections. Georgia drew attention for making it a crime to give water or food to people standing in line to vote, for example.
State Election Officials Are Under Attack. We Will Defend Them.
The New York Times – June 4, 2021 – Bob Bauer and Ben Ginsberg
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/04/opinion/republican-state-laws-election-officials.html
Tucked into many of the election laws Republicans are pushing or enacting in states around the country are pernicious provisions threatening punishment of elections officials and workers for just doing their jobs. Laws like those already passed in Republican-controlled states like Georgia and Iowa, no matter their stated intent, will be used as a weapon of intimidation aimed at the people, many of them volunteers, charged with running fair elections at the local and state levels. By subjecting them to invasive, politically motivated control by a state legislative majority, these provisions shift the last word in elections from the pros to the pols. This is a serious attack on the crucial norm that our elections should be run on a professional, nonpartisan basis — and it is deeply wrong… The partisan efforts to control election outcomes will result in the corruption of our system of government, which is rooted in fair, free elections. We say this as longtime election lawyers from opposing political parties… No requirement of our electoral process — of our democracy — is more critical than the commitment to nonpartisanship in the administration of our system for casting and counting of ballots now being degraded by these state laws. This challenge must be strongly and forcefully met in every possible way by Democrats and Republicans alike.
A frantic warning from 100 leading experts: Our democracy is in grave danger
The Washington Post – June 1, 2021 – Greg Sargent
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/06/01/frantic-warning-100-leading-experts-our-democracy-is-grave-danger/
“We urge members of Congress to do whatever is necessary — including suspending the filibuster — in order to pass national voting and election administration standards,” the scholars write, in a reference to the voting rights protections enshrined in the For the People Act, which passed the House and is before the Senate. What’s striking is that the statement is signed by scholars who specialize in democratic breakdown… “The playbook that the Republican Party is executing at the state and national levels is very much consistent with actions taken by illiberal, anti-democratic, anti-pluralist parties in other democracies that have slipped away from free and fair elections.”
The Greatest Danger to American Democracy
Robert Reich’s Website – May 31, 2021
https://robertreich.org/post/652741659619115009
The greatest danger to American democracy right now is not coming from Russia, China, or North Korea. It is coming from the Republican Party… Today’s Republican Party increasingly is defined not by its shared beliefs but by its shared delusions… Local Republicans leaders have either stepped down or been forced out of their party positions for not supporting Trump’s baseless election claims or for criticizing the former president’s role in inciting the deadly Capitol riot. American democracy is at an inflection point.
Tree-Free Paper is rescuing forests and farmers in Washington
Crosscut – May 20, 2021 – Britany Robinson
https://crosscut.com/environment/2021/05/tree-free-paper-rescuing-forests-and-farmers-washington
Creating paper from wheat waste gives forests a break — and harvesters a new revenue stream… The product is catching on. A partnership between Sustainable Fiber Technologies and Anheuser-Busch is turning barley waste from beer production into the cardboard box that holds a six-pack of Corona. Sustainable Fiber has also licensed the Phoenix Process to Essity, one of the world’s largest producers of tissue products.
We Should All Be Worried About The United Nations Food Systems Summit
Deep Green Resistance News Service -May 30, 2021 – Thea Walmsley
https://dgrnewsservice.org/civilization/ecocide/agriculture/we-should-all-be-worried-about-the-united-nations-food-systems-summit/
Later this year, the United Nations is set to hold a historic Food Systems Summit, recognizing the need for urgent action to disrupt business-as-usual practices in the food system. But far from serving as a meaningful avenue for much-needed change, the summit is shaping up to facilitate increased corporate capture of the food system. So much so, that peasant and indigenous-led organizations and civil society groups are organizing an independent counter-summit in order to have their voices heard… This summit isn’t just a case of poor planning and a lack of genuine participation for peasant-led organizations. It represents a deeper and more insidious trend in food systems governance: the erosion of democratic decision-making and the rise of powerful, unaccountable, private-sector actors who continue to consolidate power over the food system… We must stand in solidarity with the grassroots communities who are telling the truth about this conference and what it represents.
Big Oil’s Bad, Bad Day
The New Yorker – May 26, 2021 – Bill McKibben
https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-a-warming-planet/big-oils-bad-bad-day
It’s clear that the arguments that many have been making for a decade have sunk in at the highest levels: there is no actual way to evade the inexorable mathematics of climate change. If you want to keep the temperature low enough that civilization will survive, you have to keep coal and oil and gas in the ground. That sounded radical a decade ago. Now it sounds like the law… In what may be the most cataclysmic day so far for the traditional fossil-fuel industry, a remarkable set of shareholder votes and court rulings have scrambled the future of three of the world’s largest oil companies.
The ‘Mean Greens’ Are Forcing Exxon to Clean Up Its Act
The New York Times – June 1, 2021 – Thomas L. Friedman
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/01/opinion/exxon-mobil-board.html
The petroleum age will end because we invent superior technology that coexists harmoniously with nature. When we do, there will be plenty of oil left in the ground. So be careful, wise producers tell themselves, don’t bet the vitality of your company, community or country on the assumption that oil will be like Maxwell House Coffee — “Good to the last drop” — and pumped from every last well. Remember Kodak? It underestimated the speed at which digital photography would make film obsolete. It didn’t go well for Kodak or Kodachrome. Alas, though, not every oil company got the memo… But last week — finally — Exxon got the memo, in the form of a shareholder revolt in what was one of the most consequential weeks in the history of the oil and gas industry and shareholder capitalism.
Yes, We Can Electrify Almost Everything. Here’s What That Looks Like
Inside Clean Energy – June 3, 2021 – Dan Gearino
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/03062021/inside-clean-energy-electrification-report/
Many scenarios for averting the worst effects of climate change involve electrifying just about everything that now runs on fossil fuels, and shifting to an electricity system that runs mostly on wind and solar. Can this be done reliably and with existing technologies? Yes. That’s one of the main findings of the Electrification Futures Study, an ambitious project of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory that started four years ago and has now issued its final report. The transformation to a highly electrified economy is an opportunity for consumers and businesses because of the potential for cost-savings and for developing and selling new generations of products, said Ella Zhou, a senior modeling engineer at NREL and a co-author of the report. https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy21osti/79094.pdf
Recovery Legislation Provides Historic Opportunity to Advance Racial Equity
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities – June 2, 2021 – Danilo Trisi, Sarah Lueck, Javier Balmaceda and Alicia Mazzara
https://www.cbpp.org/research/poverty-and-inequality/recovery-legislation-provides-historic-opportunity-to-advance
The recovery legislation that policymakers will consider this year marks a historic opportunity to help drive an equitable recovery in which (1) all children can reach their full potential; (2) workers in low-paid jobs or facing weak labor market prospects have the supports they need; and (3) we take large strides toward universal health coverage. Achieving these goals requires dismantling our nation’s long-standing racial disparities, deeply rooted in racism and discrimination, that have driven starkly unequal opportunities and outcomes in education, employment, health, and housing. As a result, the nation now needs to make investments in children, workers, and health care that will enable more people to reach their full potential.
The Sound of Silence on Abortion
The New York Times – June 3, 2021 – Linda Greenhouse
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/03/opinion/abortion-corporate-support.html
This brings us to a subject that corporate America would evidently prefer not to talk about: abortion. It’s possible I’ve missed something, but I’ve been listening hard, and so far all I’ve heard is the sound of silence… Abortion may be an uncomfortable subject to talk about, but don’t misunderstand the silence. Abortion is not rare. It is, in fact, a common female experience, although I’ll grant that it is not as common as voting. Nearly half of all pregnancies in the United States are unintended, and some 40 percent of those end in abortion. This is life as women live it, even in Texas… Nothing can compete with the law that Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas signed last month. Not only does it ban abortion after a fetal heartbeat is detected — which can occur as early as six weeks, before many women realize they are pregnant — but it effectively deputizes the entire world’s population to enforce the ban, authorizing “any person” to sue anyone who performs or facilitates an abortion outside that time frame.
Arizona Plans Executions With Same Gas Used by Nazis at Auschwitz
Common Dreams – June 1, 2021 – Brett Wilkins
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/06/01/arizona-plans-executions-same-gas-used-nazis-auschwitz
“You have to wonder what Arizona was thinking in believing that in 2021 it is acceptable to execute people in a gas chamber with cyanide gas,” Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC) executive director Robert Dunham told The Guardian. “Did they have anybody study the history of the Holocaust?”… “Let that sink in for a minute,” said Sister Helen Prejean, a prominent death penalty abolitionist. “Then take action.”
Why Daniel Ellsberg Wants the US to Prosecute Him Under the Espionage Act
The Intercept – June 1, 2021 – Jon Schwarz
https://theintercept.com/2021/06/01/daniel-ellsberg-china-atomic-nuclear-weapons/
“The whole idea is to kill the bastards,” Gen. Thomas Power, commander of America’s nuclear forces from 1957 to 1963, once said about the use of atomic weapons. “At the end of the war, if there are two Americans and one Russian, we win.” The hold this nuclear lunacy had on the top of the U.S. government is terrifyingly illuminated in a top-secret study of U.S. war plans newly publicized by famed whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg. The document, produced by the RAND Corporation and copied by Ellsberg at the same time he exfiltrated the Pentagon Papers from RAND, examines the U.S. response to the 1958 Taiwan Strait Crisis. The study’s contents were first reported on May 22 by the New York Times.
Risk of Nuclear War Over Taiwan in 1958 Said to Be Greater Than Publicly Known
The New York Times – May 23, 2021 – Charlie Savage
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/22/us/politics/nuclear-war-risk-1958-us-china.html
Mr. Ellsberg said he had copied the top secret study about the Taiwan Strait crisis at the same time but did not disclose it then. He is now highlighting it amid new tensions between the United States and China over Taiwan… More than six decades later, strategic ambiguity about Taiwan’s status — and about American willingness to use nuclear weapons to defend it — persists… Mr. Ellsberg quietly posted the full study online in 2017, when he published a book, “Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner.”
Lesley Blume’s “Fallout: The Hiroshima Cover-up and the Reporter Who Revealed It to the World”
Portside – History News Network – June 1, 2021 – Lawrence Wittner
https://www.portside.org/2021-06-01/review-lesley-blumes-fallout-hiroshima-cover-and-reporter-who-revealed-it-world
Blume reveals that, at the time of the U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Hersey felt a sense of despair—not for the bombing’s victims, but for the future of the world… In this crisply written, well-researched book, Lesley Blume, a journalist and biographer, tells the fascinating story of the background to John Hersey’s pathbreaking article “Hiroshima,” and of its extraordinary impact upon the world… Even before the publication of “Hiroshima,” a significant number of people were deeply disturbed by the atomic bombing of Japan. For some, especially pacifists, the bombing was a moral atrocity. An even larger group feared that the advent of nuclear weapons portended the destruction of the world. Traditional pacifist organizations, newly-formed atomic scientist groups, and a rapidly-growing world government movement launched a dramatic antinuclear campaign in the late 1940s around the slogan, “One World or None.”
Were My Criticisms of Israel Fair?
The New York Times – June 2, 2021 – Nicholas Kristof
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/02/opinion/israel-gaza-conflict.html
When I wrote a couple of columns criticizing Israel as well as Hamas over the recent Gaza war, I had pushback from readers who asked: So what would you have Israel do?… No peace deal between Israel and Palestinians is achievable today, but there are steps that make peace more possible 15 years from now and those that make it less likely. Every time Hamas shells Israel, it makes a solution less likely. And every time Israel grabs more land or kills more children, it likewise makes peace less achievable. Extremists on each side empower those on the other… A basic principle of getting out of a hole is to stop digging. A basic principle of peace-building is to stop committing war crimes. That’s the only path to making insoluble problems solvable.
Lest we Forget: Trump’s and Billionaires’ Covid Profiteering, Debasing Science and Death on the scale of the Civil War
Informed Comment – June 4, 2021 – Nina Burleigh
https://www.juancole.com/2021/06/billionaires-profiteering-debasing.html
What looked like chaos or ad hoc decision-making by an improbably elected fraudster president was, in fact, deeply rooted in ideology; specifically, in the belief that the job of the government was neither to exercise leadership, nor activate government agencies to assist the American people. It was to promote private industry and its profits as the solution to anything and everything pandemic. That ideology led to profiteering, politicized science, and mass death… Is any of this likely to be investigated? Will anyone be held accountable for what appears to have been a response deliberately mismanaged by religious zealots and crony capitalists, crews equally cynical about expertise, science, and the government’s ability to prevent or ameliorate disaster?… Here, as a start, is a rundown of where inquiries into that disaster now stand.
More than McCarthyism: The Attack on Activism Students Don’t Learn About from Their Textbooks
Portside – Zinn Education Project – May 31, 2021 – Ursula Wolfe-Rocca
https://www.portside.org/2021-05-31/more-mccarthyism-attack-activism-students-dont-learn-about-their-textbooks
As a high school U.S. history teacher for 20 years, I struggled to find a good way to teach McCarthyism… “Subversives: Stories from the Red Scare” is a lesson I wish I had written earlier in my career. In it, students meet 27 different targets of government harassment and repression. Some are communists (or Communists), some are not. Most are politically engaged in some form of organizing, but not all. They are men and women, immigrants and native-born, young and old, racially diverse, in government and outside it, affluent, middle class, and poor, Queer and straight. Students analyze why these disparate individuals might have become targets of the same campaign. What kind of threat did they pose in the view of the U.S. government? And why do most textbooks leave them out?… The version of McCarthyism we offer our students should restore the powerful and inspiring stories of the activists and organizations who were its victims. The transformational social change needed in the United States and across the globe will never come from above, from presidents, CEOs, or billionaires. It will come from people like us, like our students — and like the many everyday people targeted by anti-communist repression… Although activists who call for abolition of prisons and police, or a complete moratorium on fossil fuel extraction, or a jobs guarantee for every American, are often dismissed as impractical, imprudent, and utopian, our students deserve to know there have always been savvy dreamers, clear-eyed critics of the status quo, who believe — and act like — a better world is possible.
Human Conditions, Early and Otherwise
Portside – Inside Higher Ed – June 3, 2021 – Scott McLemee
https://www.portside.org/2021-06-03/human-conditions-early-and-otherwise
The journal’s intrepid book reviewer surveys a mélange of fall 2021 university and scholarly books on human origins and development, finding some surprising commonality in an otherwise often conflictual field… “When we dehumanize our enemy, we hold two incongruous beliefs at the same time: we believe our enemy is at once subhuman and fully human,” which “transforms them into something so terrifying that they must be destroyed.” The author “explores the relationship between dehumanization and racism, the psychology of hierarchy, [and] what it means to regard others as human beings.” The latter topic may be the implicit concern of all these books. It merits as much attention as possible. The capacity to regard others as human beings needs regular cultivation, and it doesn’t grow otherwise.
Progressive News/Views 