Dear Progressive Reader,

Tomorrow marks the forty-ninth anniversary of the brutal coup in Chile that installed the dictator Augusto Pinochet. For the fortieth anniversary, poet Martín Espada shared his poem “General Pinochet at the Bookstore” with us, and Joyce Horman wrote about her husband Charles, murdered in the coup. The story of the murder of Charlie and his friend Frank Teruggi was chronicled in the 1982 film Missing—which was, for many in the United States, their first introduction to what happened during those fateful days when Chilean democracy was crushed (with support from the United States government). I also wrote Frank’s story for The Progressive on what would have been his sixty-fifth birthday.

Chile has seen many changes in recent years. As Maxine Lowy explained in 2019, “The current social revolution is years in the making.” This past March, John Dinges reported on the inauguration of Chile’s new leftist president Gabriel Boric. But this past week, an attempt at a new constitution was defeated at the polls. However, President Boric said in a national address that he planned to immediately “meet with leaders of Congress to begin a new process toward a rewritten constitution.”

Of greater concern here in the United States is the way that many on the ultra right hold Pinochet and his cruel tactics in high regard. As Mathew Foresta reported in 2020, “Far-right groups are selling merchandise that celebrates fascism, peddles conspiracy theories, and calls for violence.” One of the t-shirts depicted in the article reads “Pinochet did nothing wrong!” and as historian Kathleen Belew told Luis Feliz Leon, those t-shrts were seen in photos of members of the crowd that assaulted the U.S. Capitol on January 6. The brutal overthrow of a democratically elected president in 1973 still echoes today, nearly a half century later.

This week on our website, Nick Gallagher reports on peace activists who are taking on the military’s use of online gaming as a recruitment tool. Mark Fiore illustrates the causes of the water crisis in Jackson, Mississippi. Inmate Chris Blackwell writes that “Incarceration on TV is nothing like the prison where I live.” And Azadeh Shahshahani and Fatema Ahmad explain that “federal surveillance programs expanded [since January 6] to counter white supremacist violence have made Black and brown communities their main target.” Plus Kyle Herrig of the organization Accountable.US pens an op-ed on how “Right wing billionaires are spending limitless money to force their fringe political agendas on the rest of us.”

And don’t forget, tonight (September 10) at 7:00 p.m. Central Time we will broadcast our annual “Fighting Bob Fest” live on Facebook and YouTube. Fighting Bob Fest, a gathering of progressive speakers and activists, has been virtual for the past few years due to the pandemic. We hope to return to in-person gatherings in the future, but this year, please join us via the Internet, live or in archive form, for a great program as always. Speakers this year are scheduled to include Wisconsin's Lieutenant Governor Mandela Barnes, U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin, U.S. Representative Mark Pocan, journalists Greg Palast, Dave Zirin, Ruth Conniff, and John Nichols, and many more. Plus some great music from The Raging Grannies, the Forward Marching Band, and Emma’s Revolution. As Jim Hightower says, it is “the best political party in America.”

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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