Dear Progressive Reader,
Trump supporter and newly appointed Postmaster General Louis DeJoy appeared before the United States Senate on Friday to answer questions about his recent moves to “streamline” the Post Office, which have resulted in slower mail deliveries just before a crucial national election. But it is not the first time a President has moved an ally into this important post. In May 1835, President Andrew Jackson appointed his ardent supporter Amos Kendall as Postmaster. Kendall claimed he was eliminating corruption in the Post Office Department, but according to contemporary reports he also manipulated postal operations so that Western newspapers (which tended to support Jackson) were delivered faster and received better service than Eastern ones. His machinations also allowed postal officials in the South to refuse to deliver abolitionist literature. As I wrote in 2017, “Sounds like Donald Trump does have a sense of history after all, and has chosen to celebrate Andrew Jackson for some very personal and political reasons.”
The big news this week was, of course, the Democratic National Convention. The gathering was originally slated for Milwaukee, but became a virtual event as the coronavirus pandemic raged throughout the country. At The Progressive, we prepared a special 28-page booklet for delegates that showcased Wisconsin’s progressive history and the issues we currently face. Since it could not be delivered physically, we, too, sent it “virtually” to Democrats unable to physically travel to our state. As Ruth Conniff pointed out this week, “For most voters, though, the Democrats’ virtual ‘convention across America’ doesn’t look all that different from the made-for-TV convention spectacles of other years (minus the energy of the crowd).” It was certainly a far cry from the raucous DNC held in Chicago in 1968 at another time of political crisis in our country.
The main theme of this year’s DNC was the ways in which a Democratic ticket would be more compassionate than the current Republican Administration. Still, as Mike Ervin notes, “whenever I hear about a big tent, I always wonder how wheelchair accessible it is.” The Democrats chose activist Ady Barkan to address that issue. Barkan recently said in a New York Times interview, “I see my role, and the role of the progressive movement, as trying to get more and better Democrats elected to office, and then pushing hard to get them to promote justice and equity when they get there.” As Ervin cautions, “I hope that strategy works. We’ll see. If the Democrats just pat Barkan on the head and send him on his way, we’ll know their big tent isn’t accessible after all.” And, as Ruth Conniff says in her report on Day 4, “There is no doubt that the grassroots activists who are leading the movement against Trump in the streets, from the Women’s March to Black Lives Matter to Fight for $15, are going to have to keep on pushing during the Biden Administration.”
Next week the Republican Party will hold their convention, some of it pre-recorded, some live. For Donald Trump it is, in some ways, his ideal format—since he is at heart a “TV President.” But, as Mark Fiore illustrates, the images will be much scarier than even the dire predictions of the DNC. “Trump knows the disaster that is America,” says Fiore, “because he made it that way.” Trump recently made a stop in Oshkosh, Wisconsin (undoubtedly to try and steal the limelight from the first day of Democratic speeches in Milwaukee). As Alice Herman and Emilio Leanza report, “Trump’s descent into the community on Monday, which stoked a backlash from the left, also emboldened the reactionary elements that his presidency has come to symbolize.” Wisconsin is seen as a key battleground state this fall, and, as Herman and Leanza write, “if Oshkosh’s fractured community is at all representative of the state, the Biden campaign will need to compete to win the heartland.”
Finally, August 28 marks the fifty-seventh anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. In 2013, progressive film reviewer Ed Rampell prepared a list of civil rights films for the fiftieth anniversary of that march. In July of this year, two venerated leaders of the Civil Rights Movement who were at that march, John Lewis and the Reverend C.T. Vivian, both passed away in Atlanta, Georgia. Sarita Gupta of Jobs with Justice wrote in a 2017 op-ed for our Progressive Media Project, “We must reject the systems that oppress and disadvantage people of color and immigrants. It is up to us to continue the legacy of those who sacrificed, marched and died for jobs and the freedom to build a just and inclusive society, at last.”
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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