Dear Progressive Reader,

This past Wednesday marked the 168th birthday of Robert M. “Fighting Bob” La Follette (June 14, 1855—June 18, 1925). La Follette was a popular Wisconsin governor and U.S. Senator, and founder in 1909 of the magazine that is today The Progressive. In 1955, in honor of La Follette’s 100th birthday, U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren came to speak at the State Capitol in Madison, Wisconsin. Warren, who, one year earlier, had delivered the landmark opinion in the Brown v. Board of Education desegregation case, said of La Follette, “he suffered the same treatment that courageous men of vision in all ages have suffered. He was called a radical, a disrupter, a socialist, a subverter . . . . But preeminently, Bob La Follette was a dissenter—a dissenter in the finest sense of the word.”

On “La Follette Day” in Argyle, Wisconsin in 2019, I spoke of the need for voices like La Follette’s in the current political moment. “Today, we are again faced with a great political crisis. With economic inequality rivaling the days of the ‘robber barons,’ redistricting and voter ID laws impeding the ability of citizens to vote, and corporate influence skewing our electoral system with volumes of cash unimaginable in La Follette’s time, once again, people are calling for a return to a truly democratic system of governance ‘by and for the people.’ ”

This week on our website, cartoonist Mark Fiore illustrates the circuitous path followed by secret documents (and public excuses) in the mind and the golf resort of Donald Trump; Bill Blum scrutinizes the recent decision by the U.S. Supreme Court on voting rights in Alabama; Roger Bybee describes the closing of Master Lock in Milwaukee, Wisconsin; and Mike Ervin worries about wearing his favorite T-shirt in Tennessee in the wake of recent anti-drag laws.

Plus, Elijah de Castro looks at Georgia Power and its threats to renewable energy; James L. Hise examines the claims of the wood-pellet industry to be “carbon neutral” while impacting local communities; and Sylvan Bachhuber reports from Chiapas, Mexico, on a gathering to oppose destructive development projects.

Finally, we heard the sad news on Friday of the passing of whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg. Ellsberg died of pancreatic cancer at the age of ninety-two. Ellsberg came to prominence when he leaked 7,000 pages of secret reports on the failures of the war in Vietnam to two prominent newspapers. But throughout his life, he continued as an advocate and an activist for peace and nuclear disarmament. In a 1989 interview in The Progressive, Ellsberg said, “Of course I get discouraged. But what this is about is preserving life on Earth, and life on Earth is marvelous—a miracle. Every moment we can prolong that is worth anything we do.”

Ellsberg also quoted British historian and socialist E.P. Thomson, pointing out that “it's misleading to describe the United States and the Soviet Union as having military-industrial complexes; they are military industrial complexes. It's a defining characteristic that our economies—our research and development and the mainsprings of our industrial base—are centered on military spending. Our elites’ short-run point of view has always been to sustain the addiction of our economy to military income, to keep that regular fix of military spending flowing through our veins.”

Ellsberg wrote for The Progressive in 1991 as the Persian Gulf War was raging, saying, “The truth is that the continuation and expansion of this war represent a graver danger and a greater evil than do any of the plausible diplomatic agreements that might end it.” And in 1993, Ellsberg wrote, following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of that perceived threat, that we must immediately work toward full nuclear disarmament. “With each month and year that the major nuclear powers maintain large arsenals, postpone a full test ban, and sustain nuclear policies that suggest that these weapons convey major-power status and are useful for political and military purposes, other nations can only conclude that acquiring and in some circumstances using nuclear weapons may be in their national interest.” He proposed a new “Manhattan Project” to cage the nuclear beast that had been unleashed five decades before. Tragically, this was not achieved in his lifetime, it can only be hoped it will occur in ours.

Please keep reading, and we will keep bringing you important articles on these and other issues of our time.

Sincerely,

Norman Stockwell
Publisher

P.S. - The new 2023 Hidden History of the United States calendar is now on sale for half price!. You can still order one online.

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