Youth Lead Global Strike Demanding ‘Climate Justice Now’
Common Dreams – April 19, 2024 – Olivia Rosane
https://www.commondreams.org/news/youth-strike-climate-justice

“We are many people and youths who want to express our frustration over what decision-makers are doing right now: They don’t care about our future and aren’t doing anything to stop the climate crisis,” one young activist said… Ahead of Earth Day, young people around the world are participating in a global strike on Friday to demand “climate justice now.”… “We’re staring down another summer of floods, fires, hurricanes, and extreme heat,” Sunrise executive director Aru Shiney-Ajay said in a statement. “Biden must do what right Republicans in Congress are unwilling to do: Stand up to oil and gas CEOs, create green union jobs, and prepare us for climate disasters. Biden must declare a climate emergency and use every tool at his disposal to tackle the climate crisis and prepare our communities to weather the storm. If Biden wants to be taken seriously by young people, he needs to deliver on climate change.”

Corals are bleaching in every corner of the ocean, triggering NOAA alert
The Washington Post – April 15, 2024 – Amudalat Ajasa
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2024/04/15/global-coral-bleaching-ocean-temperatures/

Scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and International Coral Reef Initiative say the world is experiencing its fourth global bleaching event, the second in the last decade. At least 53 countries and local regions have experienced mass bleaching across the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans… “This should be a global wake-up call. The fact that corals are bleaching in each ocean basin essentially simultaneously,” Manzello said. “And more than half the reefs on the planet have basically experienced bleaching-level heat stress in the last year.”… “As predicted, the situation is getting critical globally,” Virdis said. “It’s hard to find a silver lining or a positive note with everything happening.”

World faces ‘deathly silence’ of nature as wildlife disappears
The Guardian – April 16, 2024 – Phoebe Weston
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/apr/16/world-faces-deathly-silence-of-nature-as-wildlife-disappears-warn-experts-aoe

“The changes are profound. And they are happening everywhere,” said US soundscape recordist Bernie Krause, who has taken more than 5,000 hours of recordings from seven continents over the past 55 years. He estimates that 70% of his archive is from habitats that no longer exist… For many researchers, disappearing soundscapes are a source of grief as well as of scientific interest. “It’s a sad thing to be doing, but it’s also helping me tell a story about the beauty of nature,” said Pijanowski. “As a scientist I have trouble explaining what biodiversity is, but if I play a recording and say what I’m talking about – these are the voices of this place. We can either work to preserve it or not. “Sound is the most powerful trigger of emotions for humans. Acoustic memories are very strong too. I’m thinking about it as a scientist, but it’s hard not to be emotional.”

Taking Big Oil to court for ‘climate homicide’ isn’t as far-fetched as it sounds
Grist – April 19, 2024 – Kate Yoder
https://grist.org/accountability/big-oil-court-climate-homicide-lawsuits/

The idea of “climate homicide” is getting attention in law schools and district attorney’s offices around the country. A paper published in Harvard Environmental Law Review last week argues that fossil fuel companies have been “killing members of the public at an accelerating rate.” It says that oil giants’ awareness that their pollution could have lethal consequences solidly fits within the definition of homicide, which, in its basic form, is causing death with a “culpable mental state.” In other words, the case can be made that oil companies knew what they were doing… In their paper, Arkush and Braman argued that fossil fuel companies have been acting as if they were above the law. “Under a plain reading of the law in jurisdictions across the United States, they are committing mass homicide,” they conclude. “Prosecutors should act accordingly.”

The Fantasy of a Lily-White America
Time Magazine – April 15, 2024 – Eddie S. Glaude Jr.
https://time.com/6966768/fantasy-white-america-eddie-glaude/

It was an essay, “What Would America Be Like Without Blacks,” written by Ralph Ellison, the author of Invisible Man, and, later, published in his 1986 collection of essays, Going to the Territory, that struck a chord with me… Ellison maintained that “whenever the nation grows weary of the struggle toward the ideal of American democratic equality,” we reach for the illusion of secession—the fantasy of a lily-white America. That fantasy, of course, involves not only the desire to rid the nation of Black and brown people, but aims to banish us and the issue of race from the nation’s moral conscience… This is the tragic feature of American life: that seemingly inescapable petulance and moral fatigue that leads so many to put aside efforts to make real the promises of American democracy and, instead, find comfort and safety in the idea that this country belongs only to white people… Trumpism, at its core, is the latest example of the fantasy of white America. We must say this explicitly and repeatedly, because it is at the root of the choice we face as a nation… What is required of us, if we are to escape such a fate, is to reject the comfort of the fantasy of a lily-white Republic and, finally, discover who we really are as Americans and that will involve a full embrace of the diversity that makes this great country swing, Duke Ellington style.

‘Ed Scare’ Deepens as 4,000+ Books Banned in First Half of School Year
Common Dreams – April 16, 2024 – Brett Wilkins
https://www.commondreams.org/news/book-bans-in-schools

U.S. school districts banned more books during the first half of the current academic year than during the entire last scholastic year, a report published Tuesday revealed. PEN America recorded 4,349 book bans across 52 school districts in 23 states during the fall 2023 semester, more than double the 1,841 titles that were prohibited during the spring term and more than the 3,362 volumes reported banned nationwide during the entire previous academic year. “For anyone who cares about the bedrock of American values and the protection of free expression, this report should be a red alert,” said Sabrina Baêta, manager of PEN America’s Freedom to Read program and a co-lead author of the report… “Book bans are targeting narratives about race and sexual identities and sexual content writ large, and they show no sign of stopping,” said Baêta. “The bans we’re seeing are broad, harsh, and pernicious—and they’re undermining the education of millions of students across the country.” But people are fighting back against what PEN America calls the “Ed Scare.”… “Students are at the epicenter of the book-banning movement, and they’re fearlessly spearheading the fight against this insidious encroachment into what they can read and learn across the country.”

‘Righting the American Dream’ spotlights lingering damage of Reagan presidency
The National Catholic Reporter – April 19, 2024 – Diane Winston
https://www.ncronline.org/culture/book-reviews/righting-american-dream-spotlights-lingering-damage-reagan-presidency

A mystifying irony of the moment is that amid the greatest threat to the republic since the Civil War, and as Trumpian conspiracy theories reach levels that in any other era would be dismissed as preposterous nonsense, there is a corresponding gush of truth-telling… Into that mix arrives an unsettling examination of an era and a president too often held aloft as an example of Republican sobriety and statecraft, and depicted as an offset to today’s reality. Righting the American Dream: How the Media Mainstreamed Reagan’s Evangelical Vision by Diane Winston is a measured, serious and meticulously detailed account of the interactions of the Reagan era and its significance for today… Such a realization raises the stakes on journalism’s ongoing struggle to achieve objectivity — or, more realistically, to understand what objective tools work in service of the craft. It raises the stakes as well on the more difficult challenge of how to deal with easily demonstrated blatant falsehoods that are also widely accepted as truth… Righting America reveals the deep roots of the American religious imaginary, that dangerous mix of religion-fueled politics that has become the currency of those who would defile both religion and politics to hold onto power.

Women’s Rights Are Being Rolled Back to a Time Before Women Could Vote
Slate – April 17, 2024 – Jill Filipovic
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/04/arizona-abortion-ban-1864-trump-roe-womens-rights.html

When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, just months shy of the landmark abortion case’s 50th birthday, millions of Americans were stunned that the highest court in the land had just set our rights back half a century. What we didn’t realize: Half a century is nothing. Less than two years after Roe fell, the conservative movement is taking women back not just 50 years. It’s rewinding the clock more than 150 years… It’s not a coincidence that the early anti-abortion movement in the U.S. was one headed by men, in reaction to expanding rights, freedom, and power for women—just as it is not a coincidence that today’s anti-abortion movement, formed in opposition to rapid gains in women’s rights during the 1960s and ’70s, has seen its most significant victory thanks to the most overtly misogynistic president in modern American history, a serial philanderer, a many-times-accused sexual harasser and assailant, a man recently found liable for sexual abuse… Should women’s rights in America go back to what they were in 1873? Feminists have spent the past 150 years painstakingly chipping away at the laws that forced our subservience. But today’s anti-abortion movement, and its representatives in the Republican Party, has a different answer, one it makes clear every time it argues that women’s bodies should be regulated by laws that existed before any woman had a legal say in them.

Starting over: Women emerging from prison face formidable challenges to resuming their lives
AP News – April 11, 2024 – Samantha Hendrickson
https://apnews.com/article/women-prisoners-reentry-challenges-program-shortage-d56afe6283c25e981d37d6e925d90ffd

“Women’s incarceration grew very rapidly in the early 2000s, but it took a good decade or so before the field really acknowledged the widening gap between available programs and services and the number of women who need them,” said Wendy Sawyer, research director at the Prison Policy Initiative, a research and advocacy nonprofit. That makes the journey harder for women, who confront different challenges than their male counterparts. Over half, for example, are mothers to minor children, the group says.
“Women face all of the same barriers that men face in reentry — securing employment, housing, and transportation, and reestablishing family connections — but with an extra level of difficulty,” Sawyer said.

How the US failed people in prisons during Covid: ‘Really important to learn from what happened’
The Guardian – April 18, 2024 – Anna Flagg, Jamiles Lartey and Shannon Heffernan of the Marshall Project
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/apr/18/incarcerated-people-covid-death-rates

When the Covid-19 pandemic began, it wasn’t hard to predict that incarcerated people would be at higher risk. Many prisons and jails are crowded, dirty places with inconsistent access to healthcare – breeding grounds for the highly infectious virus. But the job of documenting the deaths has fallen to a patchwork of research groups and reporters. Now, a national study from one of these collaborations, between the University of California, Irvine and Brigham and Women’s hospital, shows that at the peak of the pandemic in 2020, people inside prisons died almost three and a half times more frequently than the free population… “This is really both to have an accounting of what happened,” said Sugie, the study’s author, “but also, really importantly, to learn from what happened, so we don’t do this again in the future when we have another pandemic, another crisis.”

How Famine and Starvation Could Affect Gazans for Generations to Come
Mother Jones – April 13, 2024 – Neroli Price, Salman Ahad Khan and Gabrielle Berbey
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/04/how-famine-and-starvation-can-affect-generations-to-come/

Research on WWII’s Dutch “Hunger Winter” has terrifying implications for the region’s children—and for their children… The Dutch Famine Study, as well as other studies looking at other crises and catastrophic events—9/11, climate disasters such as flooding and fires—they’ve all consistently shown that there are epigenetic effects. Not so much of the DNA structure is changed, but the extent to which our genes are expressed is altered by the environment in which we grow and develop, and even these effects are transmitted from one generation to the next.

Major U.S. Charity Blocks Donations to Gaza Relief Agency Amid Starvation
Important Context – April 19, 2024 – Natalie Jonas and Walker Bragman
https://www.importantcontext.news/p/major-us-charity-blocks-donations

Fidelity Charitable’s’ removal of UNRWA’s U.S. arm from its platform follows the suspension of approximately $450 million in funding to the relief organization from 16 countries following Israel’s allegations that a handful of its workers were involved in the events of Oct. 7. To date, no evidence to support these claims has materialized — and UNRWA alleges that the Israeli military abused its workers to extract false confessions… “I think cutting off aid to UNRWA will go down as one of the most diabolical actions in the end that Israel caused much of the rest of the world to take, just in terms of the levels of support that UNRWA provided to the people in Gaza, as well as in the West Bank,” Sheline said. “UNRWA is something that Israel has tried to get rid of for years, and I think they saw an opportunity here.”

The West now wants ‘restraint’- after months of fuelling a genocide in Gaza
Jonathan Cook’s blog – April 16, 2024
https://www.jonathan-cook.net/2024-04-16/west-restraint-genocide-gaza/

Washington long ago cultivated Israel as its military Frankenstein’s monster. Israel’s role was precisely to project US power ruthlessly into the oil-rich Middle East. The price Washington was more than willing to accept was Israel’s eradication of the Palestinian people, replaced by a fortress “Jewish state”. Calling for Israel to exercise “restraint” now, as its entrenched lobbies flex their muscles meddling in western politics, and self-confessed fascists rule Israel’s government, is beyond parody. If the West really prized restraint, they should have insisted on it from Israel decades ago.

Leaked NYT Gaza Memo Tells Journalists to Avoid Words “Genocide,” “Ethnic Cleansing,” and “Occupied Territory”
The Intercept – April 15, 2024 – Jeremy Scahill and Ryan Grim
https://theintercept.com/2024/04/15/nyt-israel-gaza-genocide-palestine-coverage/

While the document is presented as an outline for maintaining objective journalistic principles in reporting on the Gaza war, several Times staffers told The Intercept that some of its contents show evidence of the paper’s deference to Israeli narratives…. Despite the memo’s framing as an effort to not employ incendiary language to describe killings “on all sides,” in the Times reporting on the Gaza war, such language has been used repeatedly to describe attacks against Israelis by Palestinians and almost never in the case of Israel’s large-scale killing of Palestinians.

In Fit of anti-Palestinian Hatred, Congress tries to Outlaw “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be Free”
Informed Comment – April 18, 2024 – Juan Cole
https://www.juancole.com/2024/04/palestinian-congress-palestine.html

The resolution alleges that the phrase “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” is “antisemitic.” They seem to be worse readers of texts even than they are constitutional scholars. The phrase doesn’t mention Jews. It says that Palestine will be free. Palestine is currently not free… the perspective adopted in the congressional resolution is not that of garden variety Zionism but that of the most extreme, fascistic forms of the ideology, which rule out a Palestinian state and any basic human rights for the 14 million Palestinians, who surely have as much right to collective self-determination as the 16 million Jews.

Political Warfare and Congress
Timothy Snyder’s blog – April 18, 2024
https://snyder.substack.com/p/political-warfare-and-congress

Democracy is in decline, dragged down by the autocratic lie. The autocrats offer no new visions; instead they lie about democracies and insert lies into democracies. The test of disinformation is its power to alter the course of crucial events, such as wars and elections. Russia undertook a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on the basis of a big lie about Nazis… Russia’s denazification meme did not need a Russian or a Chinese channel to reach Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene. Nor did she need a Russian or Chinese platform to spread the disinformation trope further… In the contest between authoritarian and democratic regimes, it will ultimately be not just self-defense but creative initiative that defines and saves the democracies. The era of hostile disinformation is also the era of the decline of reporting, and the two phenomena are linked. An American who has access to reporting will be less vulnerable to disinformation, and better able to make navigate the demands of democratic citizenship. A victory over disinformation will be won in a climate in which Americans have access to reliable information and reasons to trust it.

The Guardian view on the catastrophe in Gaza: it must not be overshadowed by the Iran crisis
The Guardian – April 18, 2024 – editorial
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/apr/18/the-guardian-view-on-the-catastrophe-in-gaza-it-must-not-be-overshadowed-by-the-iran-crisis

The spectre of full-scale regional conflict, and the many deaths that could result, must not draw attention away from the almost 34,000 Palestinians already killed in Gaza, according to its health authorities, and the many more who will soon die without an immediate ceasefire and massive increase in aid in what Mr Guterres called a “humanitarian hellscape”…. The urgent need to prevent a regional conflagration need not mean relegating Gaza to an afterthought. Far from it: the two issues are closely connected. A ceasefire and the release of hostages, along with the promised surge in aid, could help defuse regional tensions and find a path out of the dangers. The alternative is many more deaths in Gaza, and increased peril for those outside.

The War on Protest
Portside – April 19, 2024 – Adam Federman
https://portside.org/2024-04-19/war-protest

Since 2017, 21 states have passed 41 laws enhancing penalties and fines for common protest-related crimes—part of a wave of nearly 300 anti-protest bills introduced nationwide… The sweeping nature of the Cop City arrests and charges may be novel, but the targeting of protesters and social movements is not. Since 2017 — the same year Georgia expanded its domestic terrorism law to include property destruction — 21 states have passed legislation to enhance penalties and fines for common protest-related crimes, such as trespassing or blocking highways. “We’re in a really unique moment with the amount of legislation that we’re seeing, [with] this legal assault on protesters and the right to protest in the U.S.,” says Nick Robinson, a senior legal advisor at the International Center for Not-for-Profit Law… Accompanying these laws is increasingly harsh rhetoric from political figures to demonize protest movements, characterizing activists as rioters, mobs, violent extremists and terrorists… The new laws, stiffer penalties, and more aggressive policing have, in addition to landing more activists in jail, had a corrosive effect on social movements across the country… Even if these bills fail, they contribute to a climate of intimidation that chills speech and deters people from taking action… ​“we are skating closer and closer to authoritarianism.” Basic freedoms, once enshrined in the Constitution, are now at risk of being eliminated. ​“Congress shaves off more and more rights piecemeal until we find we are unable to speak aloud our criticisms of government policies and practices. We slowly become a police state.”

Statement by University of Southern California Class of 2024 Valedictorian
Portside – Counterpunch – April 18, 2024 – Asna Tabassum
https://portside.org/2024-04-18/statement-university-southern-california-student-asna-tabassum-class-2024-valedictorian

This should have been a time of celebration for my family, friends, professors, and classmates, anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian voices have subjected me to a campaign of racist hatred because of my uncompromising belief in human rights for all… “As your class Valedictorian, I implore my USC classmates to think outside the box—to work towards a world where cries for equality and human dignity are not manipulated to be expressions of hatred. I challenge us to respond to ideological discomfort with dialogue and learning, not bigotry and censorship. And I urge us to see past our deepest fears and recognize the need to support justice for all people, including the Palestinian people.”

UAW gets first Southern win as Tenn. plant overwhelmingly backs union
The Washington Post – April 20, 2024 – Jeanne Whalen and Lauren Kaori Gurley
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/04/19/vw-uaw-tennessee-vote/

The organizing effort caps off a strong year for the U.S. labor movement, which has won record wage increases in several industries through strikes and tough bargaining… “If the UAW can prevail, it means that the Volkswagen victory isn’t an anomaly and we’re really seeing a turnaround in attitudes in workers in the South,” Silvia said… The labor movement still faces an uphill climb. Last year, only 10 percent of U.S. workers were in a union, a record low, in part due to the explosive growth of the nation’s workforce. Meanwhile, a wave of high-profile victories at previously nonunion companies, such as Starbucks, Trader Joe’s and REI, have yet to achieve first union contracts for workers… Some experts say workers’ attitudes are changing as younger people enter the workforce.

Why Hope Is Different Than Optimism
Yes! Magazine – April 19, 2024 – Kendra Thomas
https://www.yesmagazine.org/health-happiness/2024/04/19/hope-justice-psychology-mlk

Hope, in other words, plays the long game: enduring suffering with integrity. Like Dr. King’s, it manifests in hardship and is refined in adversity. Hope enables communities to march for justice and democracy even while tasting the danger of dictatorship, apartheid or oligarchy. Hope knows it may take another generation to reach the Promised Land, but it acts today to bend the moral arc toward justice.

What If the Media Covered War Like the Profound Social Problem It Is?
Common Dreams – April 18, 2024 – Robert C. Koehler
https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/media-cover-war-like-problem

It’s the forgettable quotes, especially in regard to ongoing war, that may be the most dangerous, because all they do is solidify a collective sense of normal. My term for it is “accepted insanity.” We have the technological and psychological capacity to kill not simply thousands or even millions of people but the whole human race, but let’s talk about it in terms of strategy, tactics, and public relations! Let’s talk about it as though we’re covering a bunch of 10-yer-old boys throwing stones. Which one’s going to win?
That’s the key issue here: winning… What if war were covered the way street crime is covered—not as an abstraction, but with awareness that it’s a profound social problem? What if war were covered with external awareness, i.e., with wisdom that transcends political platitudes—rather than in obeisance to those platitudes?… In other words, war is not a product of human evolution—humanity finally becoming mature enough to fight itself in an organized, collective fashion—but essentially the opposite of that: an unevolved aspect of who we are… an embedded failure to evolve, you might say… many vets, call it moral injury. Following orders forced them to act beyond their own humanity: When you dehumanize others, you dehumanize yourself. This is the accepted insanity the corporate media cover with such win-lose abstraction, even when we’re on the brink of World War III. Multiply moral injury by several billion human beings and what you could wind up with is human extinction.