Dear Progressive Reader,

July 25 would have been the eighty-second birthday of Emmett Till—had he not been brutally murdered on August 28, 1955. Till was a young fourteen-year-old from Chicago, visiting relatives in Mississippi when he crossed the unwritten line and violated the unspoken racial moires of the 1950s South. Till’s murder, and the subsequent campaign by his mother get out the truth of his violent killing to the world, energized and informed the burgeoning civil rights movement. Activists like the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr and Rosa Parks would later tell how their actions were in part informed by the 1955 lynching of Till. The 1968 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom was set on August 28 to recognize the anniversary of Till’s death.

This past week, President Joe Biden announced the creation of an Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument in three locations in Mississippi and Illinois. But it took until March 29 of last year, more than one hundred years since it was first proposed in Congress, for a piece of legislation against lynching (now named after Till) to finally be signed by Biden. And yet, the deaths of young African Americans, often at the hands of uniformed police, continue on a regular basis in this country.

The legacy of racism in the United States must be addressed, not shoved under the rug as Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and others are attempting to do. And, as Linda Wiggins-Chavis writes on our website this week, “We must reject this false narrative, develop an anti-racist mindset, and fight against social, political, and economic injustice. This is the only way this country will be able to dismantle the systems of racial oppression that it so aggressively denies and build an equitable society for everyone.”

Elsewhere on our website this week, Jeff Abbott reports on the expansion of a U.S. State Department list of corrupt individuals in Latin America; Mike Ervin looks at the way Florida is commemorating the thirty-third anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act by continuing to violate it; Christopher Blackwell and Kevin Light-Roth write from behind bars in Washington State about the realities of solitary confinement; and Olivia Riggio tells the story of a now-exonerated rapper who was able to secretly record an album in prison that told the world of his innocence. Plus, Bill Blum drills down on Donald Trump’s extensive plans to subvert democracy should he be re-elected in 2024, Tanya Greene pens an op-ed on the undemocratic nature of the “Cop-City” police training facility planned for Atlanta; and Linnea Hjelm opines on the importance of including young people in decision-making at all levels. “The myriad crises we collectively face,” she says, “demand innovative and collaborative solutions. It is time for the expertise of teens and young adults to take center stage. Our future depends on it.”

Finally, this July 30 is designated as National Whistleblower Day, based on a U.S. law that is even older than the Constitution. Sarah Cords, who often writes on the cases of whistleblowers for The Progressive, tells the story of the day, and all the ways in which whistleblowers have not been protected, but rather penalized, by successive U.S. administrations. Cords explains that a simple thing “all Americans could do to honor whistleblowers is to do the one small thing that whistleblowers have wanted them to do all along: Pay attention to the stories it is their duty to tell you.”

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

Sincerely,

Norman Stockwell
Publisher

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