View this email in your browser ([link removed])
Dear Progressive Reader,
Since the school shooting twenty-five years ago at Columbine High School in Colorado in 1999, more than 390,000 young people have experienced gun violence in their schools. According to a graphic database ([link removed]) maintained by The Washington Post, there have been 426 school shootings in the past quarter century—an average of more than seventeen per year! In a long and moving article a decade ago in The New Yorker, Malcom Gladwell called ([link removed]) these tragic incidents of lethal violence a “slow-motion, ever-evolving riot, in which each new participant’s action makes sense in reaction to and in combination with those who came before.”
As local police continue to search ([link removed]) for a motive in the killings by a high school student at Abundant Life Christian School on Wednesday, connections to past school shooters are emerging. CNN is reporting ([link removed]) that the shooter’s father “had posted a photo on Facebook of his daughter at a shooting range in August. In the photo, the teenager can be seen wearing a black shirt with the name of the band KMFDM.” The German band’s lyrics had been quoted by the Columbine shooters, and one had worn a similar T-shirt during the 1999 killings. Other media are also noting that ([link removed]) “a Tumblr account linked to Rupnow was found to feature a picture of [the] Parkland high school shooter . . .
and posts on the 2007 Finland school shooting.” In addition, she appears to have been ([link removed]) messaging with a young man in California who was also plotting a violent attack on a government building. In the case of the California plotter, the incident was averted by the use of a “protective order ([link removed]) ” to take away his guns before he could act.
The one thing that all of these school shootings, and so many others, have in common is the availability of extremely lethal firearms. As U.S. Representative Mark Pocan, Democrat of Wisconsin, said ([link removed]) on Wisconsin Public Radio about the recent killings at Abundant Life Christian School, “we have to accept that no other country on the planet has this problem. And once we accept that this is a uniquely American problem, you figure out what that problem is.” When I first heard that investigators were trying to determine where the shooter had gotten the gun she used, my first response was: From a gun manufacturer. In the United States today there are nearly ([link removed]) 400,000,000 firearms in the possession of everyday citizens—that does not include weapons held by law enforcement and the military (which is also far too great a number, but that
conversation is for another article). That is more guns than people. That is a problem. As Ruth Conniff writes this morning in her commentary ([link removed]) in the Wisconsin Examiner about yesterday’s march by Madison students on the State Capitol: “Gun violence is the leading cause of death of children and teens in the United States. Shouting, chanting, demanding to be heard, the crowd of children came to the Capitol Friday demanding that we wake up and do something about this appalling fact.”
This week on our website, Nell Srinath asks the question ([link removed]) : “Why have the Democrats failed to win the youth vote?”; Peter Greene analyzes ([link removed]) the new “education choice” bill expected to come before the new Congress; Mike Kuhlenbeck reports on ([link removed]) nurses organizing in Iowa; and Julie Hyunh looks at ([link removed]) the recent pause on Ph.D. applications at Boston University. Plus Joe George reviews ([link removed]) the
new film Nickel Boys about racism at a boys school in Florida; and Tim Brinkhof discusses ([link removed]) the film No Other Land about the West Bank by an Israeli and a Palestinian filmmaker. Also, Gary Cohen pens an op-ed ([link removed]) on the dangers that remain forty years after the Bhopal disaster; Cristiana Baloescu opines ([link removed]) on the need for universal health care; and Leah Montagne looks at ([link removed]) ways that people can resist potential anti-immigrant actions by Donald Trump in the coming weeks.
This week marks the anniversary of two dark events in American history in our country's treatment of immigrants. On December 18, 1944, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the Korematsu decision ([link removed]) that it was legal to detain Japanese American citizens in internment camps. The decision was ultimately rescinded ([link removed]) , but its precedent remains, and was even cited ([link removed]) by supporters of Trump’s proposed “Muslim ban” in 2016. As Fred Korematsu said ([link removed]) in the 1980s, “As long as my record stands in federal court, any American citizen can be held in prison or concentration camps without trial or hearing. I would like to see
the government admit they were wrong and do something about it, so this will never happen again to any American citizen of any race, creed, or color.”
Also, on December 24, 1913, seventy-three people died, mostly children, in a panic that followed false threats by anti-union thugs during a holiday party. As Woody Guthrie documents ([link removed]) in his song 1913 Massacre, “Calumet, Michigan, in the copper country. / I will take you to a place called Italian Hall / Where the miners are having their big Christmas ball. . . . The gun thugs they laughed at their murderous joke / While the children were smothered on the stairs by the door.” The striking miners. who were celebrating in the hall along with their families, were almost all ([link removed]) immigrant workers in the copper mines of the region. The building in Calumet, Michigan, has since been torn down, but the memories remain, as the late Wisconsin folksinger Larry Penn reminded ([link removed]) us in 1989, “your lust for
green money has no where to hide, your deed has been frozen in time.”
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. - The new 2025 Hidden History of the United States calendar is now available. You can order one online and have it mailed to you. Don’t miss a minute of the “hidden history” of 2025. Just go to indiepublishers.shop ([link removed]) , and while you are there, checkout some of our other great offerings as well. There is still time to get your items delivered for the holidays.
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: [link removed].
P.P.P.S. – If you don’t already subscribe to The Progressive in print or digital form, please consider doing so today ([link removed]) . 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 ([link removed]) .
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.
Donate ([link removed])
============================================================
** Twitter ([link removed])
** Facebook ([link removed])
** Website ([link removed])
Copyright © 2024 The Progressive, Inc.
P.O. Box 1021 • Madison, Wisconsin 53701 • (608) 257-4626
Want to change how you receive these emails?
You can ** update your preferences ([link removed])
or ** unsubscribe from this list ([link removed])
