Dear Progressive Reader,

The remaining presidential primaries are, for all intents and purposes, a symbolic exercise. The two leading candidates, Joe Biden and Donald Trump have secured enough delegates for their respective parties’ nominations at conventions (which are not scheduled for another four to five months). However, that does not mean that the election’s outcome is in anyway a certainty. In addition to a variety of third party candidates, who are now getting more media coverage since the networks and large news organizations are desperately looking for something to cover in the traditional “horse race” style, there remain serious questions about the popularity and viability of both major party designees. A Reuters/Ipsos poll released in late January showed that, no matter the question, a majority of Americans are dissatisfied with the available choices. Two thirds of respondents (67 percent) said they were “tired of seeing the same candidates in presidential elections and want someone new.”

Trump’s legal cases have been covered extensively. For Biden, it seems the major area of concern over his candidacy (in spite of what mainstream media seems to believe) is not his age, but rather his militarism. As Stephen Zunes writes this week, “Young people are increasingly turning away from President Joe Biden as his administration refuses to budge in its support for Israel despite its assault on Gaza killing tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians. . . . This generational gap could cost him the election.” Meanwhile, as cartoonist Mark Fiore illustrates, the “too little, too late” approach of air-lifting aid, while simultaneously defunding the most effective aid agency, and continuing to send armaments, sends a very mixed message to voters. And, as Kathy Kelly reminds us this week in a moving essay, “When starvation is a weapon, the harvest is shame.” Kelly makes the bold appeal that: “People in the United States ought to occupy the local offices of every elected official, denouncing all forms of violence and insisting on an immediate end to any support for Israel’s genocidal war against Gaza.”

Elsewhere a continuing rise (or sustained hold on power) of authoritarian leaders remains very concerning. As Jeff Abbott reports this week, a huge rally in Brazil recently showed support for defeated president Jair Bolosonaro who was once dubbed the “Tropical Trump.” Meanwhile, Hungarian leader Viktor Orbán is predicting a sweep of rightwing candidates and policies in upcoming elections in Europe and the United States.

In other U.S. news, Mike Ervin raises concerns over the new CDC guidance that loosens COVID-19 protocols; Glenn Daigon describes a Chicago ballot initiative that would raise taxes to fund affordable housing; and I review a recent book that chronicles twenty-five years of labor and community organizing projects in cities across the United States. Plus, even as the American Library Association reports a record number of attempted book bans during 2023, Eleanor Bader looks at a successful and growing program that gets reading material inside of prison walls. “Books weren’t allowed in prisons in the 1970s; since then, millions have been given to incarcerated people across the country,” she notes. Also, John Thompson of our Public Schools Advocate project reports from Oklahoma that, “Anti-LGBTQ+ Republicans contributed to the hate that led to the death of non-binary teenager Nex Benedict;” David Lamb and Megan Walsh of the University of Minnesota Law School’s Gun Violence Prevention Clinic pen an op-ed on keeping guns out of the hands of domestic abusers; and Joe George reviews the new film Love Lies Bleeding.

Today marks the fifty-sixth anniversary of the horrific massacre by U.S. troops at the village of My Lai (locally called Sơn Mỹ) in Vietnam. Mike Boehm, whose work I profiled in The Progressive in 2018, is attending the solemn commemoration events again today but he is also there to continue the work of Madison Quakers Inc., the group he helped found, to bring direct aid to the victims of the U.S. war in that country. “We must always remember the past so we do not repeat those mistakes, but I am also looking to the future, and I see it in the faces of the children of My Lai,” Boehm told me in 2018.

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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