Dear Progressive Reader,
Greetings and best wishes for a 2022 that brings a reprieve from some of the worst aspects of 2021. And yet, as Medea Benjamin says this week, there were some things from 2021 to celebrate. She provides a list of ten accomplishments in the past year, and concludes, “If we could make gains in a year as bad as 2021, just think what we can accomplish in 2022.”
One of the big concerns in the coming year will be the midterm elections this fall, and the very future of our democracy. Christopher Dale writes, “Democracy is unraveling before our eyes, and time is running out to do anything about it.” Dale describes some of the state-level attacks on voting rights and voter access, and prescribes a federal-level guarantee of a new Voting Rights Act. There is, he says, “simply no time to individually fight, through courts or ballot boxes, all of the state and local laws that are loosening our already-faltering grasp on majority rule.”
As unprecedented wildfires ravage Colorado, we are yet again reminded, in graphic images and stories of personal tragedy, of the urgent need to address the climate crisis in 2022. Ed Rampell reviews the new film, Earth Emergency, that aired on PBS television stations this week. This documentary premiers at the same time the dark comedy Don’t Look Up, a climate-crisis allegory co-authored by activist-journalist David Sirota, is screening in theaters and on Netflix (netting 111 million hours of viewership in its first four days). As astronomy graduate student Kate Dibiasky says in the film, “Are we really about to tell the President of the United States that we have just over six months until humankind, basically every species, is completely extinct?”
Next Thursday is the anniversary of the attack on the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. The roots of that event, and the longterm effects of the movements that backed it, are still being examined. The January 6 Committee continues its investigations, and Representative Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland, has a new book, Unthinkable: Trauma, Truth, and the Trials of American Democracy, coming out this week. Raskin tells about that day, and his work to get to the truth of what happened. I spoke with Congressmember Raskin in late October to get his thoughts on the state of our democracy. “If you pull the truth away from democracy,” he told me, “then all of our institutions are in danger of crumbling.”
Finally, last Sunday, the Reverend Desmond Tutu - legendary South African archbishop, anti-apartheid activist, winner of the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize, and chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (1996-1998) - passed away at the age of ninety. In the fall of 1997, Zia Jaffrey went to South Africa to interview Tutu for The Progressive. He was recovering from his first bout with the prostate cancer that would eventually take his life. They spoke at the offices of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Cape Town. At one point she asked, “Can you speak a little about the concept of ubuntu, which is the goal of the Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Act that created the Commission?” Tutu replied, “The Act says that the thing you're striving after should be ubuntu rather than revenge. It comes from the root [of a Zulu-Xhosa word], which means a ‘person.’ So it is the essence of being a person. And in our experience, in our understanding, a person is a person through other persons. You can't be a solitary human being. It's all linked. We have this communal sense, and because of this deep sense of community, the harmony of the group is a prime attribute.” The full interview, which appeared in the February 1998 issue, can be read here.
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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