Dear Progressive Reader,
Former Secretary of State Colin Powell died of complications related to COVID-19 on Monday. Much of the media coverage has highlighted Powell’s dedication to public service and his career of firsts, breaking the color barrier as chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and later as Secretary of State. He was rightfully criticized for his role in pushing the false narrative in 2003 that Iraq was amassing an arsenal of “weapons of mass destruction,” a act for which he later apologized as the reality became evident, calling it “a blot on his record.”
But, looking back in the pages of The Progressive, it is clear that Powell’s record left many things to be answered for. Writing in “Comment” in November 1995 when Powell was being pushed as a possible opponent to Bill Clinton for the presidency, then-editor Matthew Rothschild said, “Everyone, it seems, from Ralph Reed to Kweisi Mfume, is going agog over Colin Powell, but before Gallup anoints our next President, let's check his record and his rhetoric. At every opportunity, Colin Powell exalts the free enterprise system, profit-making, and getting government off the backs of business. ‘I'm an unabashed capitalist,’ he crows.” (Powell’s son Michael would go on to chair the Federal Communications Commission, pushing an agenda of deregulation and media consolidation under both Clinton and George W. Bush).
Rothschild goes on to note, “his record is one of loyal service to the American empire. Here's the guy who hindered investigations into the My Lai massacre when he was an Army bureaucrat in
Vietnam. . . . Throughout his career, Powell has unwaveringly
supported U.S. aggression overseas, no matter the costs in human lives. As Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon have noted, Powell gave this boast on the day of the Panama invasion: ‘We have to put a shingle outside our door saying, SUPERPOWER LIVES HERE.’ ” Yes, it was important for our nation to break those race barriers in public office, but let’s not lose sight of the fact that, as Rothschild noted more than two-and-half decades ago, Powell’s record was rooted in “the kind of macho posturing we just don't need more of in this country.”
Macho posturing is on full display at local school board meetings across the country. As Sarah Lahm reports from Minneapolis, “Conservatives are disrupting school board meetings by shouting, using Nazi salutes, and even physically assaulting anyone they disagree with. But these attacks are anything but spontaneous.” And as Jeff Bryant, lead fellow of our Public Schools Advocate project, points out, “According to an NBC News analysis, there are ‘at least 165 local and national groups’ connected to protests and incidents of threats and violence directed at public schools. And many of these groups have connections to prominent national rightwing advocacy organizations and think tanks, including the American Legislative Exchange Council, the Manhattan Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, and FreedomWorks.”
Zach Roberts reports this week from the annual “Rod of Iron Freedom Festival” in Pennsylvania – celebrating guns, God, and, apparently, Donald Trump. The festival is organized by the Unification Church’s Moon family who, Roberts says, have “created a rightwing religious cult that ‘worships’ AR-15s and preaches a gun-focused faith.” Meanwhile, Lisa Geller of the Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence writes in a op-ed, “We have the power to prevent untold tragedies by recognizing the groups most at-risk for domestic violence . . . passing and implementing restrictions on firearm access for individuals with a history of domestic violence. As we wait,” she entreats us, “lives are on the line.”
Kiki Monifa, in another op-ed, notes, thirty-years after the March 1991 on-camera beating of Rodney King by Los Angeles police, “Every time I see an officer, my heart rate accelerates. My son is afraid to go out alone for fear he will be killed by the police.” Monifa concludes, “We need more education to eliminate racism in all walks of life and especially in law enforcement. We can’t wait another thirty years for things to improve.”
October 26 will mark the twentieth anniversary of the signing into law of the 2001 USA PATRIOT Act. As former U.S. Senator Russ Feingold, the lone voice in the Senate to vote against the act, reminds us this week, “As I feared, the power granted by the PATRIOT Act has not been used exclusively, or even primarily, for counterterrorism. Instead, the act’s provisions have been employed in the so-called war on drugs and against political activists. And, as history foreshadowed, communities of color have been disproportionately targeted by government surveillance.”
Strikes and labor organizing efforts continue across the country at a pace not seen in recent years. This week Jason Kerzinski brings a photo essay of workers at a Kellogg’s plant in Memphis, Tennessee. And Sophie Hurwitz reports on the potential settlement for the workers in the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE), the union of “behind-the-scenes” workers in the film industry. But shortly after that draft agreement was announced, came word of the tragic gunshot death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the set of a film being made in New Mexico. But the death of IATSE member Hutchins was not only tragic – it is a labor issue. One of the key demands that led to the threat of the largest potential strike in the film industry (before last week’s tentative agreement) was workplace safety on the set – especially GUN SAFETY.
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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