Dear Progressive Reader,

Last week, the United States again blocked a ceasefire resolution in the United Nations Security Council. It was the second time in recent weeks that an attempt to end the massive civilian casualties and provide an avenue for humanitarian aid was halted by a U.S. vote, with Ambassador Robert Wood saying that the resolution’s call for a ceasefire “will only plant the seeds for the next war.” As Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies note in their extensive analysis of the vote, “The real disconnect at the root of this crisis is the one between the isolated looking-glass world of U.S. and Israeli politics and the real world that is crying out for a ceasefire and justice for the Palestinian people.” The resolution was immediately taken to the U.N. General Assembly where it passed overwhelmingly 153 to 10, with twenty-three nations abstaining. Unfortunately, General Assembly resolutions do not have the force of law, but, as the United Nations rules explain, “While the decisions of the General Assembly have no legally binding force for governments, they carry the weight of world opinion and the moral authority of the world community.” As of this writing, the death toll in Gaza from Israeli retaliation for the inexcusable surprise attack by Hamas on October 7 has exceeded 19,000 people, a large percentage of whom are children. An additional 50,000 are believed to have been injured in the fighting.

Much of the nation (and the world) looked back last month on the sixtieth anniversary of the November 22 assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Almost anyone who was living and conscious that day will tell you you they remember exactly where they were when they heard the news. But another less remembered sixtieth anniversary took place earlier this year. On June 10, 1963, Kennedy gave the commencement address at American University in Washington, D.C. The young President, who had just turned forty-six ten days before, issued a bold call for nuclear arms control, friendship with the Soviet Union, and an end to war as a means for settling differences between people and nations. “What kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war,” Kennedy explained. “I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, the kind that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children—not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women—not merely peace in our time but peace for all time.” President Joe Biden was a twenty-year-old student at the University of Delaware (about 100 miles away) when this speech was given. Today, Kennedy’s call for peace can and should inform our current President’s foreign policy. Instead, Biden seems to be treading the old, out-dated path of providing weapons to more and more conflicts—a path about which Kennedy warned us sixty years ago: “While we proceed to safeguard our national interests, let us also safeguard human interests. And the elimination of war and arms is clearly in the interest of both [and will] offer far more security and far fewer risks than an unabated, uncontrolled, unpredictable arms race.”

This week on our website, historian Peter Dreier offers a compelling portrait of peace and civil rights activist Bayard Rustin, whose life was also recently depicted in the new Netfilx film Rustin. Joe George also reviews the new film Zone of Interest, which chronicles the life of a Nazi concentration camp official; Glenn Daigon interviews labor scholar Kate Bronfenbrenner on the new union movement; Charlie Squire writes on the leftist case for collecting objects; and Jeff Abbott reports on an anti-mining victory in Panama. Plus Mike Ervin looks at how Florida is choosing not to care for its disabled residents; Maurice Cunningham analyzes the “rise and fall of Moms for Liberty” and their attack on school boards; and Stephen Zunes brings one more story of how Henry Kissinger contributed to suffering—in this case for the people of the Western Sahara. And, as the United Nations climate talks wrap up in Dubai, two new op-eds by authors Aliyah Lusuegro and Mustafa Qadri look at the role of the Pentagon in the climate crisis, and the legacy of the United Arab Emirates in failing climate refugees.

Our Hidden History of the United States calendar for this week notes that December 10 was both the anniversary of feminist, suffragist, and peace activist Jane Addams receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931, and on that same day, in 1948, the adoption, by the United Nations, of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was shepherded by Eleanor Roosevelt. These are two important events in the history of progressive movements for peace and justice that should be remembered and honored in the current moment.

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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