Dear Progressive Reader,

On Friday, a judge in Fulton County, Georgia, unsealed the 2022 grand jury report on attempts to overturn the 2020 election. The final report, which runs twenty-eight pages includes new information, including the list of people the grand jury had recommended for indictment. This list included sitting U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina. For a variety of reasons—including immunity deals that were negotiated with some as cooperating witnesses—District Attorney Fani Willis chose to move forward with only nineteen indictments. Graham was not among them, thereby possibly earning himself the nickname of “the twentieth hijacker.” I found myself somewhat reminded of the twenty-line poem by Robert Frost, “The Road Not Taken.” The poem was first published in August 1915 in The Atlantic Monthly, and contains the prescient two lines: “Yet knowing how way leads on to way, / I doubted if I should ever come back.”

This week on our website, Kathy Kelly writes about the need to keep pressure on the government of Saudi Arabia regarding its human rights record; Glenn Daigon analyzes the attempt to challenge the renewal of a broadcast license for a FOX television station in Pennsylvania; Ming Hsu Chen looks at what the Supreme Court got wrong about affirmative action; and Mike Ervin explains how Social Security Supplemental Security Income (SSI) can “punish people for being poor.”

Plus, as the school season begins, Jacob Goodwin reports for our Public Schools Advocate project on the continuing movement by teachers’ unions for better public schools; Colleen Wynn and Elizabeth Ziff pen an op-ed on the importance of general education classes for our democracy; and Lindsay Karp issues an urgent call for politicians to act on gun control before another classroom of students is put at risk.

Monday September 11 is the fiftieth anniversary of the brutal coup—aided by the United States government—that overthrew the democratically elected president of Chile. Commemorations are taking place in that country, as well as in various cities around the United States and the world. Ed Rampell recently reviewed a series of films being screened for the occasion; Jeff Abbott reports on newly declassified documents that expose more of what Richard Nixon knew, and when he knew it; Zach D. Roberts describes for our magazine the way that rightwing groups have made the atrocities of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet into a meme; and John Dinges remembers his time working in Chile under the presidency of Salvador Allende. Dinges also has a new book, Chile en el Corazón, just released in Santiago this week, that tells the story of two U.S. citizens killed in the days following the coup.

Charles Horman and Frank Teruggi were murdered in the national stadium by the Chilean military with apparent foreknowledge of U.S. officials according to a 2014 ruling by Chilean Judge Jorge Zepeda. The two were recently honored with a new artwork by Soledad Muñoz at an event I attended in Chicago last month. The story of the Horman family’s search for answers is powerfully told in the 1982 film Missing by Costa-Gavras. The film had a huge role in building awareness, in the United States and elsewhere, of the brutality of the 1973 coup and the subsequent dictatorship.

Finally, we sadly note the passing of the great musician and anti-racist activist Richard Davis. On October 11, 2018, The Progressive was a co-sponsor of a tribute to Davis that included the announcement of the naming of a street for him in his adopted hometown of Madison, Wisconsin. Since his passing on September 7 at the age of ninety-three, tributes have appeared in print and online. Rolling Stone wrote, “In 2014, Davis was anointed the prestigious title of Jazz Master by the National Endowment of the Arts.” The local community radio station in Madison, WORT-FM aired several wonderful tributes to Davis, including the re-airing of a 2016 interview where Davis shared his thoughts about working against racism in our society. Davis said the important things he saw that people could do in their everyday lives included study, learning about others; to “be kind and passionate and forgiving to everyone that you cross paths with;” and finally, “be active in being a part of the transformation of racism.”

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 Progressive will be streaming a video presentation of our annual Fighting Bob Fest next week on YouTube and Facebook. Watch for an announcement via email of the exact time.

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