Dear Progressive Reader,

The candidacy of Kamala Harris is historic in many ways. As the first Black and South Asian woman Vice President, she is now also the first to run for the presidency. But she also stands on the shoulders of historic predecessors. As Harris told John Nichols for his article in the August/September issue of The Progressive, “One of her first heroes was former U.S. Representative Shirley Chisholm of New York, who, as a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1972, distinguished herself from fellow contenders as an ardent advocate for women’s rights—including support for the Equal Rights Amendment, pay equity, and the right to choose.”

Shirley Chisholm was born 100 years ago on November 30, 1924, and this year a number of exhibits, publications, and a new film are commemorating her life, her work, and her 1972 campaign. In New York City through next July, the first major museum exhibition on Chisholm and her career is on view to the public. A new book from the University of California Press that presents the first compendium of Chisholm’s speeches and writings comes out next month (look for a review in the forthcoming October/November issue of The Progressive). And, currently screening on Netflix, a biopic simply titled Shirley and starring Regina King, tells the story of her groundbreaking political career. As Ed Rampell wrote in his review on our website last March, “As today’s . . . presidential race unfolds, Shirley provides a stark contrast by dramatizing a campaign for the Oval Office more than half a century ago, when idealism was on the ballot.”

In 2015, ten years after her death, Chisholm was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama. In his remarks, Obama noted, “There are people in our country’s history who don’t look left or right -- they just look straight ahead.  Shirley Chisholm was one of those people.  Driven by a profound commitment to justice, she became the first African-American congresswoman—the first African-American woman from a major political party—to run for President. . . . Shirley Chisholm’s example transcends her life.  And when asked how she’d like to be remembered, she had an answer: ‘I’d like them to say that Shirley Chisholm had guts.’  And I’m proud to say it:  Shirley Chisholm had guts.” 

On our website this week, Sam Stein reports from several villages in the West Bank where residents are being evicted by the Israeli military to have their homes demolished and their land occupied by illegal settlers. Mike Ervin looks into an effort by Wisconsin Republicans to hamper the ability of disabled voters to cast their ballots in the upcoming election. “Republican pushback against these accessibility accommodations is yet another example of how forces in some states seem determined to make it harder for people who aren’t seen as reliably Republican voters to cast their ballots,” he writes. And Christopher Cook and Theresa Ghilarducci pen an op-ed on the retirement crisis in the United States that is not being addressed on the campaign trail. “The next President will need to face the retirement crisis head-on, and fast. If they don’t, this cauldron of elder poverty, economic instability, lack of pension and retirement savings, spiraling downward mobility, and the many challenges facing older workers, retirees, and all the people obligated to care for them, is poised to boil over,” they opine.

Finally, two sad passings of note.

On August 28, Rabbi Michael Lerner died at his home in Berkeley, California, at the age of eighty-one. For more than thirty-five years, Lerner published Tikkun, a magazine that called itself “a prophetic voice for peace, love, environmental sanity, social transformation, and unabashedly utopian aspirations.” Lerner previously was an editor at the legendary Ramparts magazine.

In Wisconsin, civil rights activist Joe McClain died last Friday at the age of ninety-seven. McClain was an active participant in the Fair Housing marches in Milwaukee in the 1960s, a state-level affirmative action officer in the 1970s and 1980s, and a supporter of programs for youth in the 1990s and 2000s. In an interview with The Capital Times newspaper last month, McClain told Miquéla V. Thornton, “If he were a young man again, McClain said, he would be a youth voting organizer. . . . ‘You can’t give up. If you give up, they win.’ ”

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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