Dear Progressive Reader,
The year 2020, a year that was like no other, is over. As we move into the new possibility that is 2021, we at The Progressive wish all of you the best, with hope for progressive change in the coming year.
This week, Bill Lueders, shares his progressive wish list for the new year. It was sent out as an op-ed from our Progressive Media Project and picked up by many papers across the country; it even ran in The Korea Times, the oldest of three English-language newspapers published daily in South Korea. The Media Project, founded in 1993, held five workshops in 2020 to train individuals and organizations in the art and skills of op-ed writing. We plan more in 2021.
Our Public School Shakedown project continues to pull back the curtain on efforts to privatize our public schools, and to showcase the efforts of educators and activists to make our schools better for students and teachers. Founded in 2013, the project publishes the work of writers around the country on the frontlines of the struggle for public education. Writing last month, education fellow Rann Miller says, “The goal of the Biden Administration must be to remove the racism that’s widespread in America’s schools. It must work to increase the numbers of Black and Afro-Latinx teachers in classrooms nationwide and keep them there [and] make culturally relevant education a priority, particularly given that the majority of students in public schools nationwide are non-white.”
Mike Ervin, who first wrote for The Progressive in 1985, continues his regular columns in the magazine and online. His latest offering celebrates an oft-ignored part of our Constitution in which, he notes, “if it wasn’t for the Twentieth Amendment, we’d all be subjected to [Trump’s] rantings and raving, his acts of gleeful cruelty and revenge, and so much more for an extra forty-three days.”
This week, organizer and journalist Luis Feliz Leon reports on two new laws in New York that are protecting the rights of fast-food workers. Sarah Lahm, columnist and researcher from Minneapolis, analyzes the ways past economic policies have shaped racism today. And Saskia Hostetler Lippy, psychiatrist and community activist in Portland, gives some guidance on how we can all combat extremism in the coming year. “Please join me in this New Year’s wish for love over hate, action over inaction, democracy over tyranny,” she writes. “In this increasingly complex world, some answers come surprisingly profound and simple.”
Keep reading, and we will keep bringing you important articles on these and other issues of our time.
Sincerely,
Norman Stockwell
Publisher
P.S. –Our annual year-end fund drive is still underway. We need you now more than ever. 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.
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