Dear Progressive Reader,

A legal giant passed away this week. On April 2, California human rights attorney Peter Schey died at age seventy-seven of complications from lymphoma. Schey was a legendary champion of the rights of immigrants, especially children. His 1993 victory in the case Reno v. Flores protected the lives of countless young people. In 2019 the “Flores Settlement” was invoked to block the Trump Administration in its efforts to indefinitely detain unaccompanied migrant children, and just this past week it was again used to require the Department of Homeland Security to provide proper housing for migrant children currently in open-air camps in Califorina. (Claudia Villalona paints a moving portrait of the conditions in some of those camps in the latest issue of The Progressive).

Although Schey did not live to see this latest application of his important work, his legal career and human rights activism continue to receive praise. Even the legal information website Lexis-Nexis posted a tribute, calling him a “giant of jurisprudence” who “filed Class Action lawsuits in favor of the constitutional rights of millions of immigrants from various parts of the world, but especially Mexicans and Latin Americans.” Schey’s own website tells the story of his broad interests, his important work, and his passion for a better world. A small, private memorial is being held this weekend for Schey, with future plans for a larger, public celebration of his life.

On our website this week, Alicia Simba writes for our Public Schools Advocate project on the need for “universal pre-K” education—in spite of the difficulties. Plus, Jeff Abbott reports on the second anniversary of El Salvador’s brutal “state of emergency” that has detained countless innocent citizens (as Esty Dinur also chronicled in The Progressive last August). With recent polls showing a very close race between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, Bill Lueders goes back into the archives and updates an article he first compiled in 2020—the shocking history of the Trump Administration’s epic failure to address COVID-19, resulting in tens of thousands of preventable deaths.

Award-winning cartoonist Mark Fiore takes on the disconnect between calling for humanitarian aid while providing the weapons that bombed an international aid convoy. Larissa Truchan takes a deeper look at the United Nations report on sexual violence in the October 7 attacks by Hamas against Israel. And, Michaela Brant reports from Chicago on the activist group looking to disrupt the upcoming Democratic National Convention unless the Biden Administration changes course on its military support for Israel.

Speaking of conventions, the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago will be forever remembered for the protests against the Vietnam War that took place there. Filmmaker Glenn Silber remembers being influenced by those protests, and a decade later he produced the documentary The War at Home on Madison, Wisconsin’s antiwar movement. Silber’s film will be screened again in Madison next Tuesday as part of a three-week long series of presentations and an exhibit titled “Waging Peace in Vietnam,” which chronicles resistance to the war by active duty GIs and recent veterans of the tragic and unpopular war. I first covered the exhibit for The Progressive when it opened in the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

This month marks the forty-ninth anniversary of the United States military withdrawal from Vietnam. With more than 58,000 U.S. soldiers, and more than 3,000,000 Vietnamese, Cambodian, and Laotian civilians and soldiers killed in the conflict, one would think the world had learned its lesson—but today there are at least 110 armed conflicts around the globe. The wars in Ukraine and Gaza receive the most publicity, but the ongoing conflicts in Sudan and Myanmar each saw more than 12,000 casualties in 2023, and too many others continue to claim the lives of both combatants and civilians. As Pete Seeger powerfully sang throughout his life, “When will they ever learn?”

Finally, as Wisconsin’s presidential primary election concluded this week, the “uninstructed” (Wisconsin’s version of “uncommitted”) vote came in at a level more than double the number its proponents had anticipated, and more than twice the margin of victory Biden received in 2020. For Madison’s Isthmus newspaper, I wrote an article that looked at the uncommitted and third party votes that are emerging this year, and harkened back to the 1924 third party run of our magazine’s founder Robert M. La Follette. Later this month, from April 25 to 27 in Madison, The Progressive will be celebrating the centenary of La Follette’s third-party campaign for the presidency in 1924. We will be holding a conference at the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, the Arts and Literature Lab, and the Barrymore Theatre with scholars and authors, speakers and musicians, and a theatrical performance by La Follette’s great granddaughter, Tavia La Follette. For more information, visit progressive.org/progressive-presidency.

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. – Don’t miss a minute of the “hidden history” of 2024 – you can still order The Progressive’s new Hidden History of the United States calendar for the coming year. NOW HALF PRICE – Just $7.50 plus $3.00 shipping. Just go to indiepublishers.shop, and while you are there, check out some of our other great offerings as well.

P.P.S. – If you like this newsletter, please consider forwarding it to a friend. If you know someone who would like to subscribe to this free weekly email, please share this link: http://tiny.cc/ProgressiveNewsletter.

P.P.P.S. – If you don’t already subscribe to The Progressive in print or digital form, please consider doing so today. Also, if you have a friend or relative who you feel should hear from the many voices for progressive change within our pages, please consider giving a gift subscription.

P.P.P.P.S. – Thank you so much to everyone who has already donated to support The Progressive! We need you now more than ever. If you have not done so already, please take a moment to support hard-hitting, independent reporting on issues that matter to you. Your donation today will keep us on solid ground and will help us continue to grow in the coming years. You can use the wallet envelope in the current issue of the magazine, or click on the “Donate” button below to join your fellow progressives in sustaining The Progressive as a voice for peace, social justice, and the common good.