The Texans who brought this disaster on their state were those who hold power in Texas, namely the oil and gas industries and their stooges in politics.
Its a sad thought that money not people has been and still will be the overriding force in getting things done, this is the stupid we need to change before it kills us.
It is often forgotten how we got here. In 1980, Reagan began cutting aid to higher education. This contributed to tuition costs that at times rose even faster than health care costs. At the same time he reduced government funding of student aid, turning education loans over to private banks which found a new lucrative source of revenue. The result reduced an entire generation of students to debt peonage. The Federal Government, which created this mess, should be responsible for fixing it
Robert Supansic
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Education should be free that's how we create a great nation and a great planet Earth. Education is the true foundation of civil liberty...
Maybe we should be pushing to do something about the interest rates - I just don’t understand how after studiously making payments for 10 years you still owe either the same amount or more! Or push to apply the interest paid to the principal.
Not useful. I'm surprised xxxxxx chose to run this one. Leave Meyerson to his favorite historical topics, labor's rise during the New Deal and immediate postwar period and its subsequent stumbling.
Tom Gogan
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A century ago, Spengler noted that one sure sign of impending Caesarism is the simplification of politics.
In its heyday, the Roman Republic enjoyed robust political competition between the conservative Optimates and the liberal Populares.
In the Republic’s final years, all that went away; there were only Crassus’s men, Pompey’s men, Caesar’s men, etc.
We need to revisit the history of policies of the Federal Communications Commission. When radio became popular, the prevailing sentiment was that the public airwaves belonged to the society at large and should reflect the public interest, and society rather than profits for the few.
This idea, which still warrants support, was frittered away with media consolidation and greater and greater control of the print media, radio, and television by smaller numbers of huge corporations. In 1987, Congress with encouragement from President Reagan, repealed the Fairness Doctrine, a 1949 law that required radio and later television to communicate a diversity of points of view and "balance" in the presentation of material.
With the abolition of the Fairness Doctrine, Limbaugh emerged as the first rightwing, racist, reactionary to offer a model of radio and television discourse in defiance of any meaning of fairness or balance. Now corporate elites and politicians conjoin to limit and distort what passes for news and information.
Limbaugh was the beneficiary of changed policies, consolidation of the corporate media, and the rise of the right in political life.
the “supernatural campaign” involves fortune-tellers and spiritual leaders who cast spells on superstitious military generals.
crossing traffic circles then all slowing down to tie your shoes (so that you are not technically violating the law)
The “Lets’ report pro-military Facebook pages” is an online campaign that encourages Facebook users to report dubious pages spreading misinformation in support of the coup.
Movements like this overseas are why we are seeing far more foreign medical grads in recent years coming into residency in NYC ready to speak up and speak out.
THIS ARTICLE IN JACOBIN IS BULLSHIT. The headline and the article blame the "Democrats" for supporting subsidies to private health insurance corporations. "For Democrats in Washington, it's the only way," the article says.
In fact, more than half of all Democrats in the House support Medicare for All, which is a single-payer system. But that's not enough votes to pass it, since every Republican is opposed to M4A. Almost all the other House Democrats, as well as Biden, support a public option - a government-run insurance agency to compete with private for-profit insurance companies. All Republicans oppose this too.
Jacobin's reflexive and obsessive knee-jerk opposition to "the Democrats" distorts political reality and leads to cynicism, hopelessness, and paralysis. The real world is more complicated than Jacobin's holier-than-thou views.
Jose Marti statue at Parque Libertad square in the center of Matanzas, Cuba
We did it !
On February 24, 2021 The Chicago City Council unanimously voted to pass R2020-616, Voting to End the Embargo of Cuba
We want to thank all the people who worked on this campaign for more than two and a half years
This vote today sends a strong message to the Biden administration
Please join the steering committee in our continued push to change the antiquated and harmful US policy. We will be back in touch soon with national actions.
THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT
Sincerely,
Steering Committee
Marilyn McKenna
Marguerite Horberg
Cheryl Johnson Odim
Peggy Hopson Valdes
Kimberly Waller
Otis Cunningham
Sarah Staggs
Chicago Steering Committee to Normalize Relations with Cuba [email protected]
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Today the Chicago City Council unanimously passed Resolution R2020-616 calling for the End of the Blockade of Cuba. The vote passed 50-0 making Chicago the 14th and the largest US city to call for the cessation of antiquated and hostile federal policies and an immediate rollback from the additional sadistic impositions from the Trump era. I am so proud to have been part of this citywide effort that took more than 2 years of organizing - constituents from all 50 Wards visited their Alderman, wrote letters, made calls and worked to pass this measure -a bill that while symbolic sends a strong message to the White House. The testimonials from doctors, academics, cultural leaders, from the religious community, educators, and solidarity activists is truly a moving record of what Cuba has meant to our lives. Thank you everyone and now onward to Biden and DC!
Geoffrey Jacques has given us a great and highly needed introduction to and history of "Freedomways" at a time when the story and achievements of left progressive organizations is being systematically distorted by and/or erased from the most available public records and media. Thanks a lot for this.
(I'm also appreciative for this as a contributor to Freedomways of an article on my trip to Afghanistan in the late '80s in which I confronted the lies and distortions that characterized the propaganda and policies of the U.S. government and its media mouthpieces. I noted in that article that the elements the U.S. supported-- i.e. the Taliban and that ilk -- were murderous, reactionary and the opposite of the "freedom fighters" they were labeled to be.)
Another thinker ahead of his time. Good to know it was resurrected and reprinted, and seemingly being used by scholars in the universities but also referenced by Black Lives Matter. Some of the W.E.B. Du Bois quotes are being credited and used. Perhaps that was a lead in for this book to read and studied?
Among the musical settings of his works, list "Big fat hairy vision of evil," set by Dale Jurgenson (1971) and by Elie Siegmeister (1975); and my own "Pity the Nation" (2020) scheduled for performance on our monthly house concert May 4, 2021.
Leonard J. Lehrman (& Helene Williams Spierman Lehrman)
A vigil and poetry reading is held outside of City Lights Books in San Francisco for its founder Lawrence Ferlinghetti on Tuesday Feb. 23, 2021, who died on Monday at the age of 101. Friends and fellow poets shared remembrances, read his work and raised their glasses. (Beth LaBerge/KQED)
eighty years ago she would have joined Eichmann
but she was born too late
one hundred forty five years ago
she would have joined
Nathan Bedford Foster
but she was born too late
one hundred eighty years ago
she would have joined Jackson
but she was born too late
but she was not too late in 2001
in joining Bush-Chaney
in Afghanistan and Iraq
twenty year disasters
costing six trillion and
two million deaths
and not too late in 2011
to join Hillary Clinton
in Libya
killing fifty thousand Libyans
turning the #1 African country to #53
in 2012 the Queen’s target was Syria
where the regime change failed
another two hundred thousand dead
There are many myths that people in the United States tell and repeat about how social change has happened in our history. One such myth is that white people are the originators of nonviolence strategies and philosophies. In fact, the roots of revolutionary nonviolence are in the Black community— and go beyond well-known figures like Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, and John Lewis.
Back in the 1930's, Black newspapers were reporting on the Indian Independence movement with great interest. Transnational solidarity between Black and white clergy in the U.S. and Indian activists abroad brought the strategies of revolutionary nonviolence stateside. In 1940, the Harlem Ashram was established as a place for spiritual leaders, organizers, and activists to gather and work together using these strategies to dismantle racial segregation. This incubator of nonviolence gave rise to others. Their work influenced the strategy and training used by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). The Montgomery Bus Boycott gave rise to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee grew from Nashville and other lunch counter sit-ins. The Harlem Ashram is the story of many who developed strategies and used nonviolence trainings to prepare for the struggle for justice.
Collaboration between activists for independence in India and those against segregation in the United States brought revolutionary nonviolence stateside.
Many are wondering how to respond to the current white supremacist threat. We only have to look to history — to those who organized against the brutal culture and laws of segregation in this country — for inspiration on the importance of relationship building, creative strategies and training to dismantle it today. Few people today know that it was transnational solidarity between Black and white Christian clergy in the United States and Indian activists fighting for independence from British colonial rule that introduced the philosophies and strategies of revolutionary nonviolence to the United States, and that this work would build the foundation leading towards the civil rights movement.
Lessons of the Sixties A History of Local Washington, DC Activism for Peace and Justice from 1960-1975
The 1960s and early 1970s saw widespread upheaval in America. Major movements against the war in Vietnam and for civil rights, women’s rights and gay and lesbian rights produced significant changes and laid the groundwork for later gains. Washington, DC, as the nation’s capital, is remembered by millions of participants in these movements primarily as the heart of national protest efforts during that time. But during the 60s and 70s there was also a vibrant and diverse local movement for political, cultural and social change in and around the nation’s capital. The full history of “Washington DC in the 60s” has not yet been told.
The aim of the project has been to collect and make permanently available oral histories and historical documents on the efforts and lessons learned by local activists, students and organizers who dreamed of building a better world through new ideas, political advocacy, local organization building, and various other means in the Washington, D.C. area in the years 1960-1975. Our goal is to make materials easily available for future activists, historians, students, writers, and media producers.
The major product out this effort is a series of individual and group interviews. Below are a series of links that provide different ways to access this collection of 60 interviews. In addition to the interviews, our web site has some historical documents as well as descriptions of the documents that have been donated and now archived at the George Washington University Special Collections Research Center.
Interviews on our Lessons of the Sixties web site. If you would like to see who we have interviewed, the best starting point is to browse the short biographies on our web site. You can then click on any interview of interest and you will be taken to the YouTube copy of the interview. Except for very minor editing to clean up technical problems and to add descriptive titles, the interviews are presented exactly as recorded.
Interviews via YouTube: Select this link to go to YouTube for access to the interviews, and then scroll through the list alphabetically to find an interview of interest.
Keyword search: If you should want to search through the interview and document collections to find resources related to a specific topic, you can search all the keywords that we created for each of our interviews and document collections. You can go directly to the keyword search page and follow the instructions on that page for how to search. You can also reach the keywords search page through the drop-down menus once you are on the Lessons of the Sixties web site home page.
We plan to wrap up the project with a small number of remaining interviews, COVID safety eventually permitting.
These resources are all made available under creative commons licenses which means that the video interviews, being online, can be downloaded and used by historians, teachers, and filmmakers with proper attribution but without having to pay fees or seek permissions. They already have featured prominently in a documentary about the history of voting and statehood in Washington DC.
Lessons of the 60s
c/o Institute for Policy Studies
1301 Connecticut Ave. NW, Suite 600
Washington, DC 20036
Tel 202-234-9382
“Chinatown, Filipinotown, Japantown, Little Saigon
were all built on resilience.
We will survive this, too.”
————
Hate crimes have a long and ugly history in the U.S. and throughout the world. Since the Coronavirus began, racist attacks against Asian Americans have escalated—seniors assaulted, businesses vandalized, and hateful graffiti has appeared in countless places, from Los Angeles to Seattle, and from San Francisco to Wisconsin to New York. When former President Trump referred to COVID-19 as the “Kung Flu” or “Chinese Virus,” he promoted these hate crimes by fanning the flames of ignorance and racism.
Trump is no longer president, but the attacks against Asian Americans continue. Three weeks ago, an 84-year-old immigrant from Thailand was assaulted while taking his daily walk in San Francisco. He died two days later. Earlier this month, a 61-year-old Filipino American man was slashed across the face by another passenger on the New York City subway. He needed almost 100 stitches.
As always, artists use the power of art to fight back. CSPG’s Poster of the Week was made a year ago, by multimedia artist Monyee Chau. She created these "resiliency posters" after stickers from a white nationalist group were posted around Seattle’s Chinatown-International District.
Join Sergio Atallah of CO-CFJ as he interviews Jennifer Bing and Shaina Low on Monday 2/22/21 at 7pm Mountain Time.
The interview will cover the Israeli military detention of Palestinian children, Jennifer & Shaina's work on HB 2407, and information on the ways the public can help work for justice for these Palestinian minors.
This event is being co-sponsored by Friends of Sabeel - Colorado.
Jennifer Bing directs the Palestine Activism program for the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) and currently works with Defense for Children International Palestine on their joint advocacy campaign, “Israeli Military Detention: No Way to Treat a Child.”
Shaina Low serves as an Advocacy Officer at Defense for Children International Palestine and currently serves on the American Friends Service Committee's Palestine Advisory Committee.
Saturday, February 27, 3-4:30 pm PST;
4–5:30 pm MST; 5–6:30 pm CST; 6–7:30 pm EST
As part of its 14th annual Bravo Test Nuclear Memorial Weekend of Action, the Pacific Life Community (PLC) invites you to join a conversation with two illustrious representatives of sister antinuclear organizations. ring:
Featuring:
Seth Shelden, Liaison to the United Nations for the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), awardee of the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize.
Jackie Cabasso, Executive Director, Western States Legal Foundation; National Co-Convener, United for Peace and Justice; and North American Coordinator, Mayors for Peace
Introduced and Moderated by PLC member, Jim Haber
How is the disarmament movement working to build momentum and halt nuclear proliferation?
How is the change in national leadership affecting nuclear weapons policy?
How are linkages being made with climate justice and racial justice movements here and abroad?
As old anti-nuclear campaigners age out, what is inspiring younger activists to confront the nuclear legacy?
Password, if needed: nde (for Nevada Desert Experience, our zoom host)
The Pacific Life Community (PLC) is a network of spiritually motivated advocates for nuclear abolition and human rights in general. We are committed to ending nuclear weapons and war-making through nonviolent direct action along the Pacific Rim in collaboration with the global peace movement.
For more information about this year’s (or past) Pacific Life Community, Bravo Test Nuclear Memorial weekend, find us on Facebook or our website.
Eyewitness Palestine, Jewish Voice for Peace, and the OBJECTOR Impact Project present a conversation with young Israeli and Palestinian leaders who are helping shape a new generation of resistance to militarism and inequality.
Hear from Atalya Ben-Abba, Sami Hureini, Yael Amber, and Abed Abou Shehadeh on joint struggle in Israel/Palestine and international solidarity in these urgent times. (See below for more information on the panelists)
This event marks the release of award-winning documentary OBJECTOR to on-demand platforms for North American audiences, accompanied by a discussion guide to help facilitate meaningful reflection and conversation, and an international letter of solidarity with young Israelis who face incarceration for refusing to participate in the occupation and oppression of Palestinians.
Attendees are encouraged to watch the film OBJECTOR before this panel featuring its protagonists. By registering here, you will receive an email with links to the documentary witha discount code, and to the Zoom discussion event.
This event isfree of charge. The spoken language will be English and unfortunately interpretation will not be available. Attendees are welcome to pose questions to the participants.
PANELISTS: Atalya Ben-Abba and Yael Amber are organizers with Mesarvot, a network of activists whose goal is to support conscientious objectors, and to promote discourse on civil disobedience among the Israeli public. Atalya is the main subject of the documentary OBJECTOR. Sami Hureini is an organizer with Youth of Sumud, a group of Palestinians in South Hebron Hills committed to peaceful popular resistance as a means to end the Israeli occupation. Abed Abou Shehadeh is a political activist, and Tel Aviv's first Palestinian City Council Member.
Maurice Mitchell, National Director of the Working Families Party
moderated by Gara LaMarche, President and CEO of The Democracy Alliance and a Senior Fellow and Instructor at the Colin Powell School
To work on race, equity and justice is to deal with permanent crisis, but the past year has been a perfect storm of reckoning with racial violence and white supremacy, assaults on the basic practices of democracy, and a pandemic that yet again laid bare the fundamental inequities of the American economy – while the existential threat of climate change looms larger than ever, after four years of government neglect and denialism. How have organizations and coalitions managed to weather all the grief, fear, rage and divisiveness – while changing the terms of debate, staving off authoritarianism and winning key victories. What leadership qualities are needed to hold us together in times like this?
Join us on March 2nd for a conversation about these questions with Rahna Epting, Executive Director of Move On, and Maurice Mitchell, National Director of the Working Families Parties. The event will be moderated by Gara LaMarche, President and CEO of The Democracy Alliance and a Senior Fellow and Instructor at the Colin Powell School leading the development of a new social justice leadership initiative to be jointly housed at CCNY’s Colin Powell School for Civic and Global Leadership and CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies.
The Bay Area Book Festival's year-round author conversation series, Bay Area Book Festival #UNBOUND, is hosting the live, virtual launch event for Viet Thanh Nguyen's forthcoming novel, The Committed, on Tuesday, March 2nd at 7pm PST.
DVAN is thrilled to be an official sponsor of this special event celebrating our co-founder and co-director, Viet Thanh Nguyen, and his highly-anticipated sequel to the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Sympathizer.
From the Bay Area Book Festival:
Viet Thanh Nguyen burst onto the literary scene with The Sympathizer, an “intelligent, relentlessly paced and savagely funny” (Wall Street Journal) debut novel that won 2016’s Pulitzer Prize in fiction. The world has been waiting ever since for the next chapter in the life of Nguyen’s unforgettable antihero, a half-French, half-Vietnamese double agent in the Vietnam War. The wait is over: Nguyen is back with The Committed. We catch up with our narrator in Paris, where he falls in with left-wing intelligentsia while still reeling from his torturous post-war “reeducation.” Nguyen has truly outdone himself; Booker Prize winner Marlon James calls The Committed “a sequel that goes toe to toe with the original then surpasses it. A masterwork.”
If you saw our July 2020 star-studded virtual event, Coming Together When Things Fall Apart, you caught a glimpse of Nguyen’s insight, wit, and grace in articulating the truths we need right now — whether about war, politics, or the complexities of human emotion. Nguyen will be joined by Laila Lalami, author of The Moor’s Account, for which she was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; The Other Americans, which was shortlisted for the 2019 National Book Award; and most recently the nonfiction work Conditional Citizens. This live conversation is part of Bay Area Book Festival #UNBOUND in partnership with the legendary City Lights Books, a bastion of activism and cutting-edge literature.
Event Details
Each ticket includes private access to the event recording for 10 days following the live event. Signed copies are limited and all copies will be shipped by City Lights Books in San Francisco starting March 2.
The Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network (DVAN)’s primary mission is to promote voices and stories of the Vietnamese diaspora through nurturing writers, poets and artists, and connecting their work to readers, audience, and diasporic communities all over the globe. DVAN’s programs rely on donations from individuals and foundations. DVAN is part of the incubator program at Intersection for the Arts, and a project of the San Francisco State University's College of Ethnic Studies, both are not-for-profit 501(c)(3) organizations. Your donations are tax-deductible.
We define the Vietnamese diaspora as communities of people of Vietnamese origin outside of Vietnam. We take on a diasporic perspective because many of our family members have been pushed out of Vietnam to many parts of the world and it makes sense for us to share stories and engage in dialogues.
Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network
College of Ethnic Studies San Francisco State University
1600 Holloway Avenue
San Francisco, CA 94132
