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Dear Progressive Reader,

Today is the fifty-eighth anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. In Washington, D.C., and several cities across the United States advocates of voting rights are gathering to both remember that anniversary and to advocate for improved voter access across the country, even as Republican-controlled state legislatures enact laws to restrict voting ([link removed]) in more and more states. Like the 1963 march, today’s gatherings are multi-issue as well. As the Reverend Dr. William J. Barber II told ([link removed]) The Washington Post, “It’s a certain sadness that we have to fight over the American people having access to the ballot. We have to fight to get the American people a living wage.” The march in Washington today is also calling for D.C. statehood
([link removed]) .

In an op-ed for our Progressive Media Project ([link removed]) in 2017, Sarita Gupta, executive director of Jobs With Justice wrote ([link removed]) , “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.”

In 2013, on the fiftieth anniversary of the legendary march, the Reverend Jesse Jackson, Sr, who had attended the first march, spoke. His words, not all of which were delivered due to time constraints, appeared in full ([link removed]) in The Progressive. “The march in 1963 was not merely a cultural celebration. It was on the cutting edge of change and the challenges of that day. Thus all of the great marches had a clear political agenda challenging the powers that be and the power that wants to be -- to seek relief from misery, anxiety, and fear. This season of activity must be no less. All that we fought for is under attack again.”

As the Delta variant ([link removed]) of the COVID-19 coronavirus continues to rage across the country it now accounts for largest number of new cases. Meanwhile, many of the inequities that the past year-and-a-half of pandemic have highlighted, continue to plague us as well. As Finbarr Toesland explains ([link removed]) , one less reported casualty is the pandemic’s impact on LGBTQ+ bars and clubs. Jody Ellis reports ([link removed]) on “community fridge” projects, meant to address food insecurity, are facing opposition from city officials. And Lauren Lindsey pens an op-ed on the impacts of COVID-19 on people with autism. “The pandemic has exposed just how dysfunctional and fragile our society is, and how people who are the most in need, like those of us with autism, are still the most let down,” she writes
([link removed]) .

Infrastructure improvements are needed across the country, everyone agrees. The struggles, mostly partisan, have been over what that word means, and what infrastructure projects should have government support. As David Masciotra points out ([link removed]) , “After forty years of relentless, often bipartisan pursuit of a corporate and antisocial agenda, beginning with Ronald Reagan’s declaration in 1980 that ‘government is the problem,’ the big business, profit maximization consensus in Washington, D.C., is finally breaking down.” And Sklar Baker-Jordan notes ([link removed]) , the current infrastructure proposals “would greatly improve the lives of the people in Appalachia. For those of us in the mountains who have long campaigned for more public investment in our struggling region, this proposal is a long-awaited answer to our prayers.”

Finally, as our Hidden History ([link removed]) calendar reminds us, Monday of this week also marked the ninety-fourth anniversary of the execution of labor activists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti in an earlier era of anti-immigrant hysteria. The Progressive (then called La Follette’s) covered their trial extensively through the reporting ([link removed]) of Elizabeth Glendower Evans. She began her reporting following their arrest in 1921 with the words, “[A]ll this took place in the months when the anti-alien hysteria which had been gathering head since the war, came to a climax.” Fifty years after their deaths, Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis exonerated the men, noting ([link removed]) that their tragic story “should serve to remind all civilized people of the constant
need to guard against our susceptibility to prejudice, our intolerance of unorthodox ideas, and our failure to defend the rights of persons who are looked upon as strangers in our midst.”

The Progressive has two events coming up in early September. On Thursday, September 9 we will hold our annual “Fighting Bob Fest” – it will be streamed live on the Internet. Then on Saturday, September 11, at 10:00 a.m. at Madison, Wisconsin’s Forest Hill cemetery, we will hold an event rededicate the newly restored grave markers of Robert M ([link removed]) . and Belle Case ([link removed]) La Follette. Stay tuned for more details on these upcoming events in next Saturday’s newsletter.

Please keep reading, and we will keep bringing you important articles on these and other issues of our time.

Sincerely,
Norman Stockwell
Publisher

P.S. –If you don’t already subscribe to The Progressive in print or digital form, please consider doing so today ([link removed]) . Also, if you have a friend or relative that you feel should hear from the many voices for progressive change within our pages, please consider giving a gift subscription ([link removed]) .

P.P.S. –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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