Dear Progressive Reader,
 
A rally has been planned for today in Washington, DC, under the name “Justice for J6.” The event is being held in support of the January 6 insurrectionists who violently attacked the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to overturn the results of the November 2020 election in which Joe Biden won the presidency by more than seven million votes. Organizers obtained a permit for a crowd of about 700, far fewer than the thousands who attended Donald Trump’s speech on the Mall that day in January. The actual number attending today’s event may well be fewer than the more than 643 who have already been charged with a variety of federal crimes for their actions on January 6. But, as cartoonist Mark Fiore illustrates, for Trump and his version of the Republican party, it is okay if you lose, so long as you claim it was a fraud. “Don’t let elitist tricks like addition and counting steal your victory,” Fiore’s narrator intones.
 
Repercussions from the rapid U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, and the subsequent Taliban takeover, continue to reverberate. The U.S. military was forced to admit this week that the August 29 drone strike on a Kabul neighborhood not only did not kill any “terrorists,” it killed ten innocent people—“an aid worker and nine members of his family, including seven children.” Drones have become a key weapon of today’s wars, and as Edward Hunt points out, “Despite its withdrawal from Afghanistan, the U.S. military maintains an ‘over-the-horizon capability,’ which allows it to continue launching airstrikes.” Jake Whitney, in his review of the new book Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War by Samuel Moyn, notes that Moyn argues “that the long struggle to make warmaking humane—to reduce civilian casualties, ban torture, and treat prisoners of war with civility—has not only diverted from the ultimate goal of ending war altogether, but gone a long way toward legitimizing it.” And, as peace activist Kathy Kelly pens in a moving op-ed, “Our wars of choice were waged against people who meant us no harm. We must choose, now, to lay aside the cruel futility of our forever wars.”

Elsewhere on our website this week, Ed Rampell reviews the new four-part documentary by filmmaker Ken Burns on the life of boxing champion and anti-war activist Muhammad Ali that premieres on PBS tomorrow. David Rosen writes about the less-discussed urban digital divide that limits Internet access for many inner-city school children. And Jeff Abbott, reporting from Guatemala City, points out that two hundred years after the nations of Central America gained their independence from Spain, Indigenous communities are still fighting for their rights.
 
On Tuesday, September 21, at 7:00 p.m. Central Time, sportswriter Dave Zirin will discuss his new book, The Kaepernick Effect:Taking a Knee, Changing the World, with editor Bill Lueders. The book is reviewed this week on our website by education writer Jesse Hagopian, who says, “Dave Zirin’s extraordinary new book is devoted to telling how a star athlete ‘taking a knee’ inspired young athletes across the country to join a historic social movement.”  The event is sponsored by The Progressive magazine and A Room of One’s Own bookstore. It will be streamed live on Facebook and YouTube and archived for later viewing. Please plan to join us. You can also get a copy of this brand new book mailed to your home with your donation to The Progressive of $50 or more by clicking here.
 
Finally, The Progressive and our Public Schools Advocate project will be hosting a panel at this year’s NetRoots Nation virtual conference. Our panel, called “The Truth About the Attacks on Teaching Critical Race Theory in Public Schools,” will take place on Saturday, October 9 at 3:45 p.m. Eastern Time. You can get a discounted registration to access more than 100 hours of panels and workshops at this link (courtesy of The Progressive).

 
Please 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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