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Dear Progressive Reader,
On September 15, 1963, a terrorist incident took place in the city of Birmingham, Alabama, when members of the Ku Klux Klan planted dynamite ([link removed]) in the stairwell of the 16th Street Baptist Church ([link removed]) . It was only one of several bombings of Black churches in that month alone in Birmingham, but on this morning, four young girls were killed ([link removed]) and at least fourteen others ([link removed]) injured. The church today is still an active ([link removed]) house of worship and for this year’s sixtieth anniversary commemoration, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was the keynote speaker ([link removed]) . “Our past
is filled with too much violence, too much hatred, too much prejudice. But can we really say that we are not confronting those same evils now?,” Jackson told ([link removed]) the audience.
Writing recently for our website, Miriam Davidson described ([link removed]) the burnings of churches in the Southwest—not from anti-Black racism, but quite possibly from anti-immigrant sentiment. “This crime recalls the dark history of church burnings in the United States, which date back to before the Civil War. African-American churches in the South were targeted for being way stations on the Underground Railroad and for supporting Black emancipation,” Davidson wrote ([link removed]) . Other churches have also been targeted for their support of the LGBTQ+ community. And in October 2018 a gunman opened fire inside the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, killing eleven people and injuring six more while shouting antisemitic statements ([link removed]) .
Writer Jamie Beth Cohen had relatives among those killed in Pittsburgh that day. This week, from her home in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, she reported ([link removed]) on a conference taking place this weekend called “The Gospel at War” that used a sword on its literature to promote workshops on confronting feminists, art, and “the yellow bus” (representing liberal curriculum in public schools). Remembering her Jewish grandfather who fought in World War II, Cohen ponders, “If my grandfather, Leonard, were still alive, celebrating with my family here in Lancaster on Erev Rosh Hashanah [September 15, 2023], would he recognize the country he fought for? Or would it remind him of the places his parents fled?” As Justice Jackson reminded ([link removed]) the crowd in Birmingham on Friday morning, “Learning about our country’s history can be painful, but history is
also our best teacher.”
On our website this week, Carol Burris describes ([link removed]) recent laws passed in Oklahoma and North Carolina that further blur the line between public and private schools. Rebecca Wolf pens an op-ed ([link removed]) on why Big Ag does not want Congress to pass a fair farm bill when it comes up for renewal this year. And Jeff Abbott reports ([link removed]) on the dangerous path through the Darién Gap where more and more migrants are being forced to pass trying to reach safety and asylum in the United States. “Migrants fleeing violence and the impacts of climate change, as well as those migrating in the hopes of economic opportunities and seeking asylum, have been pushed into taking the route because of the implementation of new visa regimes
in countries further north,” he explains.
Finally, tomorrow marks the fiftieth anniversary of the torture and murder of legendary Chilean folk singer Victor Jara. A leader in the “Nueva Canci ([link removed]) ón ([link removed]) (New Song) movement,” Jara was a musician, a teacher, and a political activist championing the rights of working people in his home country of Chile and elsewhere. In August 1969, he gave a concert ([link removed]) in Helsinki, Finland in opposition to the U.S.war in Vietnam. Following the brutal coup led by General Augusto Pinochet on September 11, 1973, Jara was arrested at his workplace and taken to Estadio Chile, the football stadium being used as a detention center, with thousands of others. His last words from the stadium were in the form of a poem, smuggled out and later recorded ([link removed]) by Pete Seeger. On September 16, Jara was killed by
Chilean military officers.
Seven of those officers were convicted ([link removed]) two weeks ago by the Chilean supreme court
with sentences of up to twenty-five years (all of the men are currently between seventy-three and eighty-five years old). But another officer, Pedro Pablo Barrientos Núñez, has been living in Florida for decades, untouched by Chilean courts. In 2016, a suit filed on behalf of Jara’s family in a U.S. federal court found that Barrientos was indeed guilty of firing the bullets that killed Victor Jara, but it was not until July of this year that a judge in Orlando stripped Barrientos of his U.S. citizenship—opening the door for his extradition to face justice in a Chilean court. But will the U.S. government take that next step? It remains unclear. I have been trying to find out for more than six weeks to no avail. Here is my article on what we know ([link removed]) about the status of Barrientos so far.
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 ([link removed]) and Facebook ([link removed]) . Watch for an announcement via email of the exact time.
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