Dear Progressive Reader,

Thursday, September 16 was the 120th anniversary of the birth of Mildred Fish-Harnack. Born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, “Mili” Fish would meet and marry Arvid Harnack, a German scholar on a fellowship at the University of Wisconsin. In 1929, she moved to Germany with Arvid and in 1938 they began to work in the resistance movement against the Nazi government. Together with other friends, they worked in an organization known as The Red Orchestra (Die Rote Kapella), producing leaflets, posters, and stickers to incite civil disobedience, and aiding some Jews and other resistance fighters in escaping Germany. They also documented atrocities and shared military intelligence information with both American and Soviet agents. On September 7, 1942, Mildred and Arvid were arrested by the Gestapo and Arvid was sentenced to death. Mildred was sentenced to six years in prison, but Adolf Hitler personally intervened, demanding a new trial which resulted in her execution by guillotine on February 16, 1943. She was the only American woman executed on direct orders of Adolf Hitler.

For many years the U.S. government refused to recognize Mildred Fish-Harnack because she and her group had worked with the Soviet Union (even though the Soviets were our allies during World War II). However, she has been recognized more recently as an anti-fascist hero in her home state of Wisconsin. Wisconsin Public Television produced a documentary on her life in 2011, and in 2019, the City of Madison dedicated a monument in her honor. Her birthday is now designated as “Mildred Fish-Harnack Day” in Wisconsin public schools, allowing students to learn more about her life and activism.

The PBS series The U.S. and the Holocaust, produced by by Ken Burns, Lynn Novick, and Sarah Botstein, does not include mention of Fish-Harnack, but it does chronicle several other everyday people who fought against Naziism. As Ken Burns told Ed Rampell in an exclusive interview for The Progressive, “Over these seven years [since beginning work on this film], we’ve seen America be threatened more than it’s ever been threatened in its existence by the same kind of dark forces that overtook Germany. We don’t know what will happen, but there’s an incredible relevance to the story that we’re telling today.” On our website this week, Zach Roberts speaks with journalist and author Andy Campbell about his new book, We Are Proud Boys: How a Right-Wing Street Gang Ushered in a New Era of American Extremism. Campbell explains, “The mainstream media is just now recognizing the threat posed by the Proud Boys . . . . I really think these next two election cycles are going to be just incredibly violent. It’s a scary time, for sure.” You can also listen to the full interview as a podcast.

Also this week on the web, Jeff Abbott looks further at rising authoritarian tendencies in El Salvador; Mark Fiore illustrates the “cruelty travel” operation being conducted by Florida governor Ron DeSantis and others; and Sarah Cords reviews the new book, Against the Wall: My Journey from Border Patrol Agent to Immigration Rights Activist, by government whistleblower Jenn Budd. Plus, Eleanor J. Bader reports on groups working to support LGBTQ+ refugees from Ukraine; and Natasha Kristian presents a moving photo essay on one Ukrainian village struggling to rebuild following the departure of Russian troops.

Friday, September 23 was the forty-ninth anniversary of the passing of Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, who died of cancer at age sixty-nine in the weeks following the brutal military coup in that country. Neruda’s early life was chronicled in the 2016 film Neruda by Chilean filmmaker Pablo Larraín. Neruda’s magnum opus chronicling Latin American history and struggles for change, Canto General, was first published in 1950 in Mexico City, and was reissued for its fiftieth anniversary in a new translation by Jack Schmitt. From that translation, I include these verses about the power of unity in struggle:

“The people paraded their red flags / and I was among them on the stone / they struck, in the thunderous march / and in the struggle's lofty songs, / I saw how they conquered step by step, / Their resistance alone was road, /
and isolated they were like broken bits / of a star, mouthless and lusterless. / Joined in the unity made silence, / they were fire, indestructible song . . .”

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. - In case you missed it, the video of our annual Fighting Bob Fest is available for viewing online via our YouTube channel. As one viewer wrote, the “program was not only well put together but inspiring.”

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