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Dear Progressive Reader,

Hurricane Ian continues to create damage across the southeastern United States. The storm made landfall near Fort Myers, Florida, on Wednesday and, as of last night, the confirmed death toll exceeded ([link removed]) twenty-three people. It touched down again Friday afternoon in South Carolina. The Category 4 storm was one of the worst to hit the continental United States in recent history. But almost absent from U.S. news reports, is the damage done by the storm to the island nation of Cuba, which was hit on Tuesday ([link removed]) when the winds were still at Category 3. Almost the entire country of 11.2 million ([link removed]) people remains without power. A full page ad, drafted by activist organizations in support of the people of Cuba, is scheduled to appear in Sunday’s New York Times calling on
([link removed]) the Biden Administration to lift sanctions ([link removed]) and allow Cubans to purchase the supplies and materials needed to rebuild from the damage.

Even less in the news is the island of Puerto Rico, hit hard ([link removed]) on September 18 by Hurricane Fiona, which landed almost exactly five years after the devastation of Hurricane Maria, from which the island—a U.S. territory whose residents are U.S. citizens, but cannot vote in presidential elections—has still not recovered. According to CNN, at least twenty-five ([link removed]) deaths are being attributed to Fiona, and much of the island remains without power, and many homes have no source of fresh water.

There is no question that storms like these recent hurricanes are becoming more frequent and more violent due to the effects of climate change. We, as a society, must do more to protect those who are most vulnerable. In 2017, following the tragic effects of Hurricane Maria, there were calls, and some efforts, to rebuild Puerto Rico’s power grid in a manner that was more robust, and with more sustainable models and designs. As Harvey Wasserman wrote ([link removed]) at the time, “to rebuild Puerto Rico’s electric grid in a traditional centralized fashion would only prolong Maria’s agony while leaving the island deathly vulnerable to the next big wind storm.” Sadly, five years later, that prediction has unnecessarily come true.

Meanwhile, new revelations and outrage continue over Florida governor Ron DeSantis’s cruel ploy to send migrants in airplanes to Martha’s Vineyard on September 14. As Miriam Davidson writes ([link removed]) , “vulnerable people were used as pawns to make a political point.” Now, as Bill Blum reports, civil rights attorneys have filed a class action suit to block the actions by DeSantis and other governors. “As cruel as it is, DeSantis’s scheme is only a small part of a wider relocation campaign designed to expose what the MAGA right denounces as ‘liberal hypocrisy’ on immigration,” Blum explains ([link removed]) . “One thing, however, remains certain: In times of social crisis, immigrants are an easy target for political demagogues.”

Also on our website this week, Ed Rampell visits the opening ([link removed]) of a new exhibit in Los Angeles about the history of Black cinema, plus he interviews ([link removed]) director Stanley Nelson about two new films coming this month to PBS chronicling the lives of Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass. And Jake Whitney reviews ([link removed]) the new book by Chris Hedges, The Greatest Evil is War. The new October/November issue of The Progressive (which is just now on its way by mail to subscribers and newsstands) will feature an excerpt ([link removed]) from this timely volume. Hedges observations on the horrors of war echo powerfully in the wake of Russian president Vladimir Putin’s speech
([link removed]) on Friday, following Russia’s self-proclaimed annexation of territories in eastern Ukraine.

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 ([link removed]) online via our YouTube channel. As one viewer wrote, the “program was not only well put together but inspiring.”

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