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Dear Progressive Reader,
July 4 is celebrated in the United States as “Independence Day,” yet now, as much as at any time in our history, it is clear that the word “independence” is tempered for many in our country by the reality of inequity and unequal treatment under the law. Mark Anthony Rolo, a regular columnist for The Progressive until his passing in May 2020, wrote ([link removed]) in a 2016 op-ed, that the Declaration of Independence “was signed by founding fathers who had a limited vision of unalienable rights.” And Kiki Monifa, in a 2019 op-ed noted ([link removed]) , “as a lesbian of African descent, I am not an American, not completely.” And, she went on, “I am not an American and will not be an American until people of color are no longer profiled for driving and shopping, and killed for simply being. . . . I am not an American and will not be an American until our differences and similarities based on
race, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, and socioeconomic status are recognized, acknowledged, and celebrated.”
July is a month of revolutions—1776 in the United States; Bastille Day (July 14, 1789) in France; July 26, 1953 in Cuba, when Fidel Castro and others first stormed the Moncada barracks; and July 19, 1979 in Nicaragua when the Somoza dictatorship was overthrown. But as James Baldwin wrote ([link removed]) in a 1962 essay in The New Yorker, “We should certainly know by now that it is one thing to overthrow a dictator or repel an invader and quite another thing really to achieve a revolution. Time and time and time again, the people discover that they have merely betrayed themselves into the hands of yet another Pharaoh, who, since he was necessary to put the broken country together, will not let them go.” Baldwin’s 1962 essay for The Progressive, “A Letter to My Nephew,” remains our most read story. “This is the crime of which I accuse my country and my countrymen and for which neither I nor time nor history will ever forgive
them,” he wrote ([link removed]) , “that they have destroyed and are destroying hundreds of thousands of lives and do not know it and do not want to know it.”
Another, less remembered revolution took place in France in 1830. Called the “July Revolution,” unemployed workers rose up and shuttered newspapers were attacked by police when they attempted to continue publishing the news. Eventually one constitutional monarch was replaced by another, and that government, too, was overthrown in 1848. But perhaps the most interesting outcome of 1830 was a young twenty-six-year-old scholar named Alexis de Tocqueville who left the following year to spend time studying the newly formed government and culture of the United States of America. De Tocqueville and a colleague spent a total of 286 days traveling around the fledgling democracy. The result was a two volume (although the second volume is divided into four books) history and analysis called De La Démocratie en Amérique or Democracy in America ([link removed]) . The first volume was published in 1835, the second in 1840. The books form an incredible, in-depth and
penetrating analysis of the United States in its early years. But the books are also prescient in their predictions of the many struggles this country would encounter. “The election of a President of the United States,” he noted, “may be considered as a crisis in the affairs of the nation.” This statement is certainly being reflected on a daily basis as the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 ([link removed]) th Attack on the United States Capitol ([link removed]) continues its hearings and disclosures.
Similarly, in de Tocqueville’s chapter on “Judicial Power in the United States and Its Influence on Political Society,” he compares the role of the courts in various European countries and notes, “The Anglo-Americans . . . have made [the court] a powerful political organ.” This analysis has perhaps been no more apparent than in the raft of decisions released by the U.S. Supreme Court over the past two weeks. As cartoonist Mark Fiore illustrates ([link removed]) , the Court’s decisions are far reaching, and most certainly the product of calculated political appointments. As Griffin Dix points out, in an op-ed on one recent ruling, “the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen marked a major step backward.” And, as Grace Vedock reports ([link removed]) , Justice Clarence Thomas has put the LGBTQ+ community on alert by looking very far
backward in his concurring opinion in the Dobbs decision, when he “called on SCOTUS to reconsider constitutional protections for contraceptive access, same-sex marriage, and same-sex intimacy.”
Communities continue to organize in a variety of responses to the Dobbs decision which overturned nearly fifty years of precedent in Roe v. Wade. As columnist Steph Black urges ([link removed]) , “It’s always been a matter of when and not if, but that hasn’t soothed any of the anger, fear, grief, or confusion felt by many over the past few days. But in the midst of the chaos, there is still work to be done, and all of us have an obligation to do what we can to protect abortion rights and access wherever we can.” Eleanor Bader reviews ([link removed]) a brand new free online e-book, We Organize to Change Everything. And, as Pride month concludes, Laura Goetz pens an op-ed ([link removed]) on the importance of LGBTQ+ role models in the raising all children.
Finally, in international news, Jeff Abbott reports on ([link removed]) the impact of the Bitcoin crash on the people of El Salvador; André Aram covers ([link removed]) the perils and the promise of social media in Brazil’s poorest neighborhoods; and Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies look at the just concluded NATO summit in Madrid and point out ([link removed]) , “While the world determines how to hold Russia accountable for the horrors committed in Ukraine, the members of NATO should do some honest self-reflection and recognize that the only permanent solution to the hostility generated by this exclusive, divisive alliance is to dismantle NATO.”
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. – The Progressive hosted a webinar entitled “What’s Really Going On With the War in Ukraine?” on Tuesday, June 28. Panelists Zoltán Grossman of The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, and Phyllis Bennis of the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C. spoke about the history of the region and the possibilities for peace. An archive of the program can be viewed on YouTube ([link removed]) .
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