Dear Progressive Reader,
As the nation begins “opening for business” in a random patchwork of city, county, and state rules and procedures, science and data seem to be lost in the discussions. Wisconsin’s Supreme Court overturned the Governor’s “Safer-at-Home” order, never mentioning the context of the current public health emergency. As Ruth Conniff reports, “The contrast between the harm suffered by the legislature, which says it was denied ‘a place at the table’ in coming up with the Safer at Home order, and the harm to Wisconsinites exposed to COVID-19 now that Safer at Home has been overturned, is a sore point for the lawyers who filed briefs on behalf of front-line workers, the disabled, and others who are worried about their health.” Meanwhile, as cartoonist Mark Fiore illustrates, Donald Trump and his friends at Fox News are determined to personally remain safer in their homes.
Nationwide rallies calling for a lifting of these sorts of restrictions, bolstered by White House tweets and wealthy donor support, have undoubtedly resulted in additional exposures to the virus. Bill Lueders’s reporting on this issue for The Progressive was picked up internationally by the British newspaper The Independent earlier this week. In the meantime, the Trump Administration has chosen to honor first responders with expensive (at least $60,000 per hour according to The Washington Post) displays of military aircraft. As Mike Ervin writes, “The squatter is probably just honoring the first responders in the same way those of his political ilk honor military veterans—with empty gestures that are just a lot of sound and fury.”
Internationally, the spread of the coronavirus continues, aided in part by U.S. deportation flights to Central America and Haiti. “It is a startling consequence,” explains Jeff Abbott, writing from Guatemala, “to the mass expulsion and deportation of migrants from across Latin America.” And in the United States prison system, where cases continue to rise, Michele Chen notes, “punitive isolation under the pretext of public health [is] worsening the crisis of mass incarceration.”
Presidential advisor Jared Kushner told Time magazine this week that he was unsure if the November 3 election would go forward as scheduled (something over which he actually has no control). He later walked this back, saying “he was unaware of and not involved in any ‘discussions’ about changing the date of the 2020 election.” But this sort of “trial balloon” raises serious issues addressed this week by Bill Blum. “Rather than delaying the election,” writes Blum, “Trump and his Republican cronies are more apt to engage in the tried and true techniques of voter suppression that have served them well for decades, including gerrymandering, purging voter rolls, and rigid enforcement of voter ID requirements.” And Trump’s opposition to vote-by-mail initiatives is one more piece of this equation. As Harvey Wasserman opines this week, “Americans hoping for a clean, fair, and reliable vote count this fall must pay attention to how their state and local officials intend to handle this election. It is the job of us all to protect this fundamental right.”
Finally, Frances Madeson provides a review and link to a series of short educational videos, extracted from the longer film You Got To Move, about organizing work in the South. “Each short film features asymmetrical fights with dramatically high stakes,” she says, “and all deliver the solace of good feelings . . . from watching ordinary folks win by gaining concessions.” Together these make for a wonderful tool for activist education in this time of distance learning.
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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