Dear Progressive Reader,

It is less than seventy-two hours until the polls open in all fifty states (and don’t forget the switch for Daylight Saving Time on Sunday in most of them). Yet, in spite of the proximity; and in spite of the barrage of advertisements on radio, television, the Internet, and in the mails; and (perhaps most crucially) in spite of the gravity of the moment and the significance of this choice for the future of our country and our planet, there still remain a number of potential voters who say they are undecided. I can’t help but think of the comments of comic writer David Sedaris, who wrote in The New Yorker in October 2008, on the eve of another momentous election: “To put [these voters] in perspective, I think of being on an airplane. The flight attendant comes down the aisle with her food cart and, eventually, parks it beside my seat. ‘Can I interest you in the chicken?’ she asks. ‘Or would you prefer the platter of shit with bits of broken glass in it?’ To be undecided in this election is to pause for a moment and then ask how the chicken is cooked.”

Another category of potential voters is the more than one half million who voted “uncommitted,” “no preference,” or “uninstructed” in the primaries. That group, most of whom remain shocked, angered, and heartsick over the Biden Administration’s continued provision of weapons and military aid to the tragic war in Gaza (and Yemen, and Lebanon). A voting block that could wield huge influence—especially in swing states like Michigan and Wisconsin. While the Uncommitted National Movement announced on September 19 that it would not endorse Kamala Harris for President, one of the movement’s co-founders, Abbas Alawieh, does appear in a new thirty-second advertising spot calling on voters to vote against Trump. “With a second Trump Administration,” he cautions, “both civilians in Palestine and our anti-war movement here in [the United States] will suffer.”

Finally, in his weekly newsletter, filmmaker Michael Moore takes aim at another group: eligible voters who do not vote. “In 2020, 66.8 percent of Americans eighteen and older came out to vote. That means two thirds of us voted, and one third did not,” he writes. Moore goes on to point out that in 2020, while Joe Biden got eighty-one million votes, and Donald Trump got seventy-four million, there were eighty million people who did not vote at all. “You’ve got the power and you have the leverage,” he continues. “I think your voice matters. I believe YOU deserve a seat at the table and a piece of the pie.” Maybe this year, with so big a table and so much pie at stake, those nonvoters will choose to make a choice in the voting booth.

As columnist Will Bunch wrote four years ago in the The Philadelphia Enquirer, “The crux of the Republican war on ballot box involves aiming to discourage voters by making it harder on them—making it difficult to find a polling place, or produce proper ID, and navigate a byzantine system. But these measures still aren’t enough to deter voters who see an election as a matter of life-or-death, which is what we’re seeing in 2020.” These concerns are even more true this year, as Bunch notes. He wrote recently about a series of exercises conducted by the Center for Ethics and the Rule of Law (CERL) at the University of Pennsylvania to help plan in advance of November 5 and the turbulent days that might follow. “The exercises found a troubling lack of preparedness among officials in the various levels of government for the possibility of election-related violence—especially given the increasing speed and power of the Internet for bad actors to fan rumors,” Bunch wrote on October 15. “[The scenario planners] urged key officials to set up lines of communication before Election Day and enlist community leaders and others to help tamp down rumors.” In addition, on the following day, the National Intelligence Council (a government agency established in 1979) released its declassified report on the potential for foreign interference in the days following year’s elections.

If you have not done so yet, now is the time to make a plan to vote this year. As musician Charlie King points out in “Three Faces in a Row,” his song that celebrates the lives of voting rights activists James Chaney, Michael Schwerner, and Andrew Goodman who were murdered in 1964: “My right to vote was paid for long ago, and the price was high.” Please exercise that right next week.

On our website this week, we continue our coverage of the multitude of issues that will be affected by this year’s voting, all the way up and down the ballot. James Hassett writes about the differences between the two presidential candidates on energy policy; Maurice Cunningham continues his warnings about the threats embodied in the plan known as Project 2025; Jeff Abbott reports on the potential impacts on the countries of Central America of Trump’s plans to deport millions of immigrants; Ella Chakarian looks at the role of the Armenian American vote in 2024; John Thompson writes for our Public Schools Advocate project about the Trump-branded Bibles being proposed for Oklahoma schools; Alexander Karn pens an oped on Trump’s toxic rhetoric; and the Reverend Joel A. Bowman Sr. of Detroit opines on why no Christian should vote for Donald Trump, whose words and actions are antithetical to Christian teaching.

Elsewhere on our website this week, Lisa Mullenneaux chronicles a group of writers using storytelling as resistance to the war in Gaza; Arvind Dilawar examines the ways the Internet site Etsy is being used to fund illegal settlements in the West Bank; and Jim DeBrosse presents a photo essay on a recent trip of interfaith leaders and activists to Palestinian communities in the West Bank. Plus, Julie Huynh shines a light on discrimination in hiring in the National Football League; Jim Carrier highlights the recent Nobel Peace Prize award to a group of Japanese atomic bomb survivors—even while the United States manufactures more nuclear bomb components; Michael Atkinson reviews the new documentary film Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat which tells the story of the assassination of Patrice Lumumba in 1961 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo; and Roger Bybee brings news of two new books that should be read together—Arlie Hochschild’s Stolen Pride and White Poverty by the Reverend William J. Barber II.

Finally, today marks the thirtieth anniversary of the death of Erwin Knoll, former editor of The Progressive. As Bill Lueders remembers, “I often find myself wondering what Erwin would have said about the issues of the moment. But there is no point in trying to guess, because whatever he came up with would have been more witty and astringent and smack-dab correct than anything I might imagine. And that makes his absence feel even more acute.”

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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