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Dear Progressive Reader,

Israel’s eleven days of attacks on Gaza, beginning May 10, have changed the conversation in Washington about U.S. relations with both Israel and the Palestinians. As Nicolas J.S. Davies and Medea Benjamin write ([link removed]) this week, “U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken keeps promising to uphold and defend the ‘rules-based order.’ But he has never clarified whether he means the universal rules of the U.N. Charter and international law, or some other set of rules that he has yet to define.” Meanwhile, as Rebecca Ruth Gould reports ([link removed]) , “The struggle for justice in Palestine can teach the left how to pressure our leaders on a wider scale, on matters beyond Israel-Palestine.” And Jesse Hagopian speaks with Aaron Dixon, co-founder of the Seattle chapter of the Black Panther Party in 1968, who says
([link removed]) , “It’s time for things to change here in America. It’s time for things to change in Palestine. There will be no justice in the world for anybody until Palestine is free. As long as the U.S. has the power to support the oppression of Palestinians, it will have the power to oppress Black people at home.”

In a 54-35 vote yesterday (with eleven absent and not voting), the U.S. Senate motion to take up a House resolution to create a commission to investigate the events of January 6 failed ([link removed]) due to the filibuster rules – falling short of the sixty votes needed to move ahead. This “I know nothing, I see nothing” vote fell mostly along expected party lines and showed the continuing strength among Republicans of allegiance to former-President Donald Trump. One Republican Senator who broke ranks and voted for the resolution was Lisa Murkowski of Alaska who said, “Truth is hard stuff, but we’ve got a responsibility to it . . . . We just can’t pretend that nothing bad happened, or that people just got too excitable.” But as Mark Fiore illustrates ([link removed]) this week, “Republicans in Congress are increasingly willing
to have you forget all about January 6 and their culpability in the insurrection.” It seems, he continues, that “law-and-order Republicans are a thing of the past.”

This week marked the one-year anniversary of the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer. Derek Chauvin has been convicted, but his sentencing will not take place for a couple more weeks, and the trial of his three fellow former officers who stood by or helped hold down Floyd as he died has been delayed ([link removed]) until next year. Meanwhile, killings of unarmed Black people by police have continued across the country. As attorney Dean Strang writes ([link removed]) , in a little reported case in North Carolina, a homeless man named Marcus Deon Smith “died face down on the street, hogtied by officers with his hands bound to his ankles over his back, in a position too reminiscent of slavery to need further comment.” Smith’s family filed a lawsuit, and now the attorneys for the City of Greensboro are
arguing in federal court “that information discovered in the civil suit should be hidden from the public, regardless of whether the city designated it confidential.” Apparently they feel it is better for the public to know nothing.

In another event that was hidden from public view for decades, the Greenwood Massacre in Tulsa, Oklahoma was literally buried by city officials until the release ([link removed]) of a 2001 report. On May 31 and June 1, 1921, hundreds of Black residents were killed ([link removed]) , and 1250 homes burned. Now on the one hundredth anniversary of this horrific event, the U.S. Congress is finally hearing testimony ([link removed]) from survivors. The Progressive extensively covered the story of the destruction of what was called at the time “Black Wall Street” in a moving article ([link removed]) on our website by the late historian Brandon Weber. But the first mention in our pages was in August 1998—two-and-one-half years before the Oklahoma state commission’s report.
Historian Howard Zinn, writing on “The Massacres of History” noted ([link removed]) , “In 1921, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, planes dropped nitroglycerin on a thirty-six-block black business district, destroying hundreds of businesses, more than 1,000 homes, twenty churches, a hospital, libraries, and schools. The number of Black people killed was estimated by some in the hundreds, by others in the thousands. Bodies were put into mass graves, stuffed into mine shafts, or thrown into the river.” As Zinn presciently concluded, “When our government, our media, and our institutions of higher learning select certain events for remembering and ignore others, we have the responsibility to supply the missing information.”

In our magazine’s 112-year-long tradition ([link removed]) of opposing militarism and supporting peace, this Memorial Day, The Progressive will be co-sponsoring an online event with the Madison chapter ([link removed]) of Veterans for Peace on May 31 at 1:00 p.m. Central Time on our Facebook ([link removed]) and YouTube ([link removed]) channels. Please join us.

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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