Dear Progressive Reader,

George Washington’s “Farewell Address,” delivered as a letter published on September 19, 1796, when the nation’s first President was sixty-four years old, is probably best known today for its rendition in the Broadway musical Hamilton by Lin Manuel-Miranda. But this week, I found myself going to the original text to find Washington’s prescient caution about the current divisions in the U.S. House of Representatives that have precipitated an almost-certain government shutdown on October 1.

“It is easy to foresee that, from different causes and from different quarters, much pains will be taken, many artifices employed, to weaken in your minds the conviction of this truth [of the importance of ‘the unity of government’],” the anointed “father of our country” penned. “You should properly estimate the immense value of your national Union to your collective and individual happiness; that you should cherish a cordial, habitual, and immovable attachment to it; accustoming yourselves to think and speak of it as of the palladium of your political safety and prosperity; watching for its preservation with jealous anxiety; discountenancing whatever may suggest even a suspicion that it can in any event be abandoned; and indignantly frowning upon the first dawning of every attempt to alienate any portion of our country from the rest, or to enfeeble the sacred ties which now link together the various parts.”

Perhaps this message, now more than 227 years old, should be nailed to the office door of every member of the House Republican caucus under the title “Here we stand.” As cartoonist Mark Fiore illustrates this week, “Thanks to chaos among House Republicans, we’re headed for a government shutdown.”

Also in this busy political week, the intersection between electoral politics and union activism was showcased in a series of interesting ways. On Tuesday, Joe Biden became the first sitting U.S. President to join a picket line, in this case in Detroit with members of the United Auto Workers union (UAW). As Jamelle Bouie writes in today’s column for The New York Times, “However modest it was and however much it was driven by electoral calculations,” the President’s “commitment is not just words and symbolic actions. Biden’s National Labor Relations Board has been as supportive to unions and workers’ rights as any in recent memory.”

Not so for the visit the following day by Donald Trump to a non-union parts manufacturing facility in the same city. Although Trump touted support for workers, and had several Trump-supporting UAW members in attendance, his record on support for labor is much less laudable. As the AFL-CIO notes on its website, “For his entire time as President, he actively sought to roll back worker protections, wages and the right to join a union at every level. UAW members are on the picket line fighting for fair wages and against the very corporate greed that Donald Trump represents.” And the rest of the leading Republican presidential hopefuls did no better, gather for a televised (if you were a Fox News subscriber) debate in the Reagan Presidential Library in California—a location that celebrates the presidency of the anti-union crusader who broke PATCO, the air traffic controllers union in 1981 by firing more than 11,000 striking workers.

On our website this week, Saurav Sakar looks at the actions of the UAW in its ongoing quest for better wages, working conditions, and benefits in ongoing negotiations with the Big Three automakers. Joeff Davis brings a photo portrait of this year’s Farm Aid, a benefit event for family farmers and sustainable agriculture. As a special addition, Davis was one of the few photographers granted access to a special surprise musical set by Bob Dylan; his images, first published by The Progressive, have subsequently been picked up by various Dylan fan sites.

Also this week, Jeff Abbott reports on the ninth anniversary of the disappearance of forty-three students from Mexico’s Ayotzinapa, and the continued quest of family members for justice; Bill Blum previews an upcoming Supreme Court case that may affect the ability of the U.S. government to actually tax billionaires on their wealth; and Raymond Williams writes from inside prison about the pros and cons of a company that is providing inmates with tablet computers.

Also this week, Senator Dianne Feinstein died Thursday night at the age of ninety. First elected to the U.S. Senate in 1992, she become the longest-serving female member of that body. Feinstein also served as mayor of San Fransisco from November 1978 (following the murder of Mayor George Mascone and Supervisor Harvey Milk) until January 1988. My memory of her is from that time, when she supported the ultimately failed plan to use San Francisco as the home port for the nuclear capable battleship the U.S.S. Missouri. I remember gathering with a large group that included IWW musician Utah Phillips at the waterfront to protest against the ill-conceived plan. Feinstein would later blame committed peace advocate U.S. Representative Ron Dellums for the failure of the plan, telling The Los Angeles Times: “I hold him personally responsible.”

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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