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Dear Progressive Reader,

Pope Francis was laid to rest today in the Santa Maria Maggiore Basilica ([link removed]) in Rome (known in English as St. Mary Major). Francis chose this site in the City of Rome, outside the Vatican to express his closeness to everyday people. He is the first Pope buried outside ([link removed]) the Vatican since 1903.NPR's Weekend Edition reported ([link removed]) this morning that, at this basilica, his “body was welcomed by the very people he spent his ministry focused on—specifically homeless people, refugees, transgender people, victims of violence.”

Nobel Peace Prize nominee Kathy Kelly explains ([link removed]) on our website this week that “Pope Francis exhorted people to set aside the futility of war and to always care for those who bear the worst brunt of war, particularly the children. His were the words of a man whose heart aches for children who are being punished to death, sacrificed by powerful people whose lust for greed and power overcomes their capacity for compassion.” The eighty-eight-year-old Pope Francis was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina as Jorge Mario Bergoglio and became the first-ever Pope from Latin America.

As longtime ([link removed]) journalist Mary Jo McConahay writes ([link removed]) this week, “As the first Jesuit and first non-European pope since the eighth century, from a mostly poor continent, Francis brought a new perspective to the gilded halls of the Vatican.”
McConahay’s latest book, Playing God, American Catholic Bishops and the Far Right ([link removed]) , looks at the rightward shift among the Catholic Church’s bishops, particularly here in the United States. After watching the film Conclave ([link removed]) on an airplane during the time Pope Francis was hospitalized ([link removed]) in February, I can somewhat anticipate what the struggle over his successor may look like in the coming days. But as McConahay’s obituary concludes, “Reportedly, Francis occasionally said he thought of an aspirational successor who took the name John XXIV, in honor of the Pope who called for Vatican II and ‘let in the fresh air,’ and who would continue its spirit of engagement with the world.”

President Donald Trump is in Rome today to join in the commemorations of the life and legacy of the pro-immigrant ([link removed]) , pro-refugee, pro-environment ([link removed]) , and pro-peace ([link removed]) Pope, but here at home, Trump’s anti-immigrant policies continue to ravage the lives of individuals and families, many of whom are legal residents of the United States. In Wisconsin on Friday, a Milwaukee County judge was arrested ([link removed]) after allowing an immigrant, on trial in her court on another matter, to exit the courtroom through a back door when ICE officers arrived to arrest him on immigration charges. Milwaukee residents and elected officials including U.S. Senators Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin and Dick Durbin of Illinois have raised
questions ([link removed]) about the arrest. Durbin, who is the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee said ([link removed]) in a statement, “The Trump Administration continues to test the limits of our Constitution.”

In the meantime, the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia who was deported, by mistake ([link removed]) , to a prison in El Salvador, remains unresolved ([link removed]) . One thing in Abrego Garcia’s situation that is different from the hundreds of others deported in recent weeks and months, is that we know his name. According to The Los Angeles Times, as many as 90 percent ([link removed]) of those deported to El Salvador had no active criminal charges in the United States. An analysis by 60 Minutes a few weeks ago showed ([link removed]) that at least 75 percent had no record at all, not even of minor offenses like traffic stops. Yet when the men were deported, in many cases the only way family members knew they had been
sent to a notorious prison in another country was from seeing their images ([link removed]) on television footage released by Salvadoran president Nayib Bukele.

In 1948, a plane filled with deported migrants crashed in Los Gatos Canyon in California. Folksinger Woody Guthrie was outraged by the fact that newspaper and radio reports only identified the names of the pilot and crew, by not the twenty-eight migrant workers who perished in the crash. Guthrie shared this story in his famous song Deportee ([link removed]) . It would be sixty-five years before the names of the farmworkers were identified, even though, as The New York Times reported ([link removed]) in 2013, “Some were in the United States legally as part of the federal Braceros guest-worker program; others had crossed the border without documents. All twenty-eight were being returned to Mexico.” Folksinger John McCutcheon was one of those who helped identify the men as he describes in this recording ([link removed]) of Guthrie’s song.

This week on our website, Progressive intern Zane Badawi reports ([link removed]) on how Trump’s war on satellite data is hampering human rights work and disaster preparedness; Aaron Fernando looks at ([link removed]) the way doxxing is being used to identify and target student activists who are exercising their right to free speech; and Ed Rampell reviews ([link removed]) the new film The Encampments which documents the student protests of last year in opposition to the war on Gaza. Plus, Mike Ervin writes about ([link removed]) Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s “war on autism;” Sarah Anderson pens an op-ed
([link removed]) cautioning against privatizing the U.S. Postal Service; and psychiatrist Rustin Licht opines ([link removed]) on the dangers of politicians manufacturing fears against LGBTQ+ people.

This Wednesday, April 30, will mark the fiftieth anniversary of the capture of Saigon (now called Ho Chi Minh City) by North Vietnamese troops, bringing an end to the U.S. war in Vietnam. As the editors of The Progressive wrote in the weeks that followed, “After twenty-five agonizing years—it was on May 8, 1950, that the Truman Administration decided to help the French in their Indochina war—American politicians and pundits persist in their attempts to deceive themselves, and the rest of us, about the causes and consequences of this nation's intervention. After the loss of 50,000 American (and no one knows how many Asian) lives, after the squandering of $150 billion, after the destruction of several hapless countries and the disruption of our own, we are still offered the same lame explanations, excuses, rationalizations, lies.”

Commemorations by peace activists of the end of this brutal and unnecessary war will continue—including this event ([link removed]) by The Vietnam Peace Commemoration Committee. And organizations like Madison Quakers, Inc., whose work I reported on ([link removed]) in 2018, continue to try and heal some of the wounds of war. But legacies like the poisoning of the land and people in both the United States and Vietnam by chemical poisons like Agent Orange ([link removed]) will carry on for generations, and the threats from unexploded ordinance ([link removed]) continue to kill and maim.

On May 7, in Madison, Wisconsin, I will be speaking with award winning author Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai about her new volume of poetry The Color of Peace and her two novels drawn from her life as a young woman during the war. The event will take place a 7:00 p.m. at Leopold’s Books and Cafe at 1301 Regent Street and is free and open to the public. It will also be recorded for future viewing.

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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