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Dear Progressive Reader,

Tuesday November 8 will be a crucially important midterm election. Elections in the United States are administered and conducted at the local level, by countless dedicated public servants and everyday citizens. But this year, more than any other, election deniers and outright threats are seeking to disrupt and impede the electoral process. Stories of menacing poll watchers and intimidating “election observers” are being reported ([link removed]) around the country. This, combined with more than a decade of well-funded voter suppression efforts ([link removed]) , has made this electoral season particularly contentious. And as cartoonist Mark Fiore illustrates ([link removed]) , threats and intimidation are also being directed against elected officials and their family members.

In the October/November issue of The Progressive, journalist John Nichols takes a look at “What’s At Stake” in these elections, writing ([link removed]) , “N
ot to be alarmist, but the November 8 midterm elections could be the last in which the United States operates as a functional democracy.” In “Comment” in the same issue, David Boddiger and I point out ([link removed]) that, “Every certain number of years, we hear the refrain ‘this election may be the most important in our lifetime.’ While not every election can be the most important, it is certainly true that as voting rights are increasingly under threat and as partisan gerrymandering locks in a system where politicians can choose their voters rather than the other way around, it seems like participating in each election is becoming more and more critical.”

This week, health care advocate Laura Packard pens ([link removed]) an op-ed pointing out, “The GOP’s opposition to affordable health insurance through the Affordable Care Act has long been documented—their decade-long quest came within one vote of killing it in 2017. If they get another chance, Republicans will surely try again.” David Rosen notes ([link removed]) that “Senate Republicans have lined up to oppose [the] nomination [of Gigi Sohn to the Federal Communications Commission.]” Sohn is a supporter of “freedom of expression, an open Internet, and access to affordable communications tools,” and would bring a welcome consumer advocacy voice to the FCC at a time when large corporations are exerting more and more control over speech in the electronic “public square.” Tim Vanderpool reports ([link removed]
der-wall-vaderpool-41122/) from Arizona where efforts to dismantle Trump’s border wall remain at a standstill and efforts “to restore ravaged streams, clean debris-strewn worksites, and mend eroded, unstable hillsides” are on hold. But, he writes, “as political inaction drags on, the clock is ticking for wildlife.” And Steph Black reviews ([link removed]) the new film Battleground, which exposes the big-money campaigns behind the “anti-choice machine.”

Also this week, in another op-ed, Wisconsin farmer Jim Goodman says that relief to farmers of color through the Inflation Reduction Act needs to be reinstated. Goodman argues ([link removed]) , “The best way forward now is to tap into the IRA funds and empower the Farm Services Agency to deliver this much-needed relief. This act of justice would not only right a multigenerational wrong; it would clear the path to help all small farmers who are hurting right now.” Plus Jackie Abramian describes ([link removed]) a “groundbreaking report . . . on the work of women-led Yemeni organizations [that offers] key insights to address the overlapping crises [of] Yemen’s humanitarian crisis [due to the ongoing war]—further exacerbated by the pandemic—[that] now includes severe climate change impacts.” And Jeff Abbott reports
([link removed]) on the hope and possibility following Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva's victory in Brazil’s presidential run-off last Sunday.

Finally, November 7 is the 185th anniversary of the murder of abolitionist newspaper publisher Elijah P. Lovejoy. As the Library of Congress notes on its
website ([link removed]) , “On November 7, 1837, Elijah Parish Lovejoy was killed by a pro-slavery mob while defending the [printing press] of his anti-slavery newspaper the St. Louis Observer. His death both deeply affected many individuals who opposed slavery and greatly strengthened the cause of abolition.” Elijah P. Lovejoy was killed by a mob in Alton, Illinois after refusing to cease publishing anti-slavery articles in his newspaper. His press had been destroyed several times, but each time, he would get another and continue printing. Former President John Quincy Adams dubbed Lovejoy the “first American martyr to the freedom of the press.” A twenty-eight-year-old state representative named Abraham Lincoln decried this incident of vigilante violence, stating, “Let every man remember that to violate the law, is to trample on the blood of his father, and to tear the charter of his own, and his children’s liberty.” Lincoln, of course, would later
become the first Republican to be elected President. Needless to say, the party of the 1850s was very different than it appears today. In September 2000, Lovejoy was inducted into the Press Hall of Fame in his home state of Maine. Today, his is the first name listed on the “Journalists Memorial ([link removed]) ” at the now-shuttered Newseum in Washington, D.C.

Attacks on the press have become rampant in the current political climate—both here in the United States, and around the globe. In the August/September issue of The Progressive, Managing Editor David Boddiger wrote about ([link removed]) the killing of Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh and numerous others. He followed up in early August with an online interview with Jodie Ginsberg, president of the Committee to Protect Journalists, who told him ([link removed]) , ominously, “You can kill a journalist without any real consequences. To me, that says there’s a culture where it’s increasingly seen as acceptable to stifle a free press through whatever means.”

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 new 2023 Hidden History of the United States calendar is now available. You can order one online ([link removed]) and get it mailed in time for the holidays.

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