Dear Progressive Reader,

The decision this week by Arizona’s state supreme court to uphold an 1864 law prohibiting almost all abortions, combined with a recent Florida state supreme court ruling have further limited access to live-saving healthcare for millions of pregnant people. Caitlin Myers, a professor at Vermont’s Middlebury College maintains a database showing the driving distance to abortion providers for people in various states around the country. “Because of these [new] bans, it's about six million women of reproductive age who are experiencing an increase in distance of more than 200 miles,” she tells NPR. Stories from around the nation continue to emerge of people being actually told to wait in parking lots until their condition worsened so that a doctor might feel safe being able to perform an abortion without legal jeopardy. In late 2023, Dr. Julie Chor presented at a world conference in Paris on the topic of the moral distress faced by medical professionals in the wake of the growing legal restrictions to a recognized health procedure in the United States. “[I]magine the frustration, guilt, and distress her doctor must feel, emailing and calling multiple hospitals and clinics to get her to the care that they were now forbidden to provide, despite years of training and skills,” Dr. Chor told the audience.

Tensions in the Middle East continue to worsen. The United States has warned its embassy personnel to restrict their movements in anticipation of potential Iranian retaliation for the recent Israeli strike on a diplomatic compound in Damascus, Syria, that killed top Iranian officials. Iran’s leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Iranian television earlier this week, “Attacking our consulate is like attacking our soil. This is commonly agreed around the world.” In this hemisphere, another incident of an attack on an embassy (in this case, Mexico’s embassy in Ecuador) has increased regional tensions. As Jeff Abbott reports this week, “This disregard for international norms in the name of internal national policy has contributed to a worsening crisis that affects the whole world. Along with that attack on asylum, there is also a transformation occurring, where populist presidents on both the left and the right snub the system of international norms put in place following World War II.”

The holy month of Ramadan came to an end earlier this week, and with it, the short-lived bilateral ceasefire agreement called for by the United Nations. The United States chose not to block this resolution on March 25, as it had done with three previous efforts. But, as Stephen Zunes writes this week, “U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Greenfield-Thomas . . . insisted that the resolution was somehow ‘non-binding.’ ” In a notable echo of Abbott’s comment above on international norms, Zunes continues, “The Biden Administration’s audacious claim that U.N. Security Council resolutions are non-binding is, therefore, not simply a means of relieving pressure on Israel’s rightwing government, but an apparent attempt to undermine the international legal system in place since World War II.”

One example of that “international legal system” came in 1961 with the trial of concentration camp official Adolph Eichmann, which began on April 11 and lasted until December of that year. The trial was covered for The New Yorker (and later a book) by Hannah Arendt. The trial centered on “crimes against humanity,” a concept formed during the Nuremberg trials following World War II. It has since been used in trials of other perpetrators of genocide in numerous countries. Arendt’s unique view of Eichmann was the concept of “the banality of evil”—the idea that very ordinary people could commit very evil acts in mundane ways. In 2017, I interviewed philosopher and former student of Arendt, Elizabeth Minnich about her book, The Evil of Banality. “It’s from the very small seed of just being inconsiderate. Thoughtless,” Minnich told me. “Five people can’t commit genocide. You have to have a lot of people,” she explained. “[I]intensive evil is like the spark. But it can’t take unless people continue being kind of thoughtless and let normal morality be redefined in these terms because they/we are so used to certain conventions and used to being clichéd and are not accustomed to saying, ‘Wait, that’s different and I can’t do that.’ ” Minnich is now working on a new book about the importance of thinking and education in helping societies prevent that spark of evil from taking root. Hopefully the book will come out soon and reach the audiences that need to see it. As Minnich told me in 2017, “The consequences of our not-thinking are great.”

Elsewhere on our website this week, Mike Ervin describes the new FDA rule that could “ban the use of electric shocks against people with disabilities,” and the obstacles it may yet face. Christina Lieffring illuminates the problems the Democratic Party faces in rural areas, and what they could do to address it; Joe George reviews the new film The People’s Joker; and Jeff Bryant examines the efforts to turnaround a “failing school” in New Mexico using the community schools model. Plus, our Progressive Perspectives project features op-eds by Claudine Sipili (on just housing policy); E. Benjamin Money (on Biden’s green energy policy); Michael Weinstein (on rent control); and Russell Armstrong (on the need for environmental justice in marginalized communities).

Later this month, from April 25 to 27 in Madison, The Progressive will be celebrating the centenary of Robert M. 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.

Finally, The Progressive wishes a happy eightieth birthday to musician and organizer Si Kahn. A longtime friend of this magazine, Kahn’s story was told in an interview in The Progressive in April 1994. “We are all desperate for community, for things to believe in, for things to work for, for things to fight for,” he told Linda Rocawich at the time. I spoke with Kahn again in December 2019 on the topic of culture as a tool for political action. “All those songs [during the Civil Rights movement], didn’t they make a difference? I say, yes, of course they did. They sustained the people who made the movement. The songs were important. But songs alone, poetry alone, any of the arts alone, they don’t change the world. That takes organizing and direct action,” he told me. In 2021, when The Progressive helped restore the gravesite of our founders, Bob and Belle La Follette, Kahn wrote a song honoring the contributions and legacy of Belle Case La Follette, an activist for womens’ rights, civil rights, and human rights throughout her life. He can be seen performing it here on our youtube channel. Now, for Si Kahn’s birthday, his friend and colleague John McCutcheon has organized a concert, featuring McCutcheon, Billy Bragg, Cathy Fink & Marcy Marxer, Tom Chapin, Jane Sapp, Holly Near, and Kathy Mattea. The online event takes place live on Sunday April 14 at 7:00 p.m. Eastern Time and will be available for later viewing. Tickets are available here through Appalseed Productions.

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.

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