Dear Progressive Reader,

January 22 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade, the case that provided a constitutional right to obtain an abortion in any state. This right was overturned on June 24 of last year when the Court issued its ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health. As our editorial staff wrote at the time, “The Progressive has long been a staunch advocate for gender equity and abortion rights. Since the SCOTUS draft opinion was leaked in May, we’ve been covering what the end of Roe could mean for abortion rights and how people can fight back.”

As the ramifications of the Dobbs decision continue to reverberate throughout the country, we continue to cover them on our website and in the magazine. In the December 2022/January 2023 issue of the magazine, columnist Steph Black notes, “Abortion has always been a local issue. . . . We all have the ability to work to make abortion rights a reality by volunteering to drive or escort patients to abortion clinics, donating our dollars to abortion funds, and electing politicians who will protect these rights. By seeing abortion as a local issue, we can make sure that it is, in fact, genuine community care.”

This past week, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, together with the National Women’s Law Center, undertook a lawsuit against the State of Missouri to challenge its anti-abortion law. As Rachel Laser pens in an op-ed, “We’re challenging the entire ban because when state legislators give their personal religious doctrine the force of law, they violate America’s promise to separate church and state and protect everyone’s religious freedom, from the devout to the nonbeliever.” In June 2022, as our editors proclaimed: “At The Progressive, we stand committed to combating this trend toward minoritarian rule of law by supporting a diverse group of writers in telling stories about those on the front lines—in their communities, advocacy groups, state and local governments, and abortion clinics—working hard to preserve abortion access for all who need it.”

This week on our website, Jeff Abbott reports from Guatemala on a new electoral season that comes as “[current president Alejandro] Giammattei and his allies have overseen one of the most expansive, systematic assaults on Guatemala’s political system in nearly thirty years.” Miriam Davidson writes from Arizona,where the U.S.-Mexico border is treated as a “deconstitutionalized zone” that “has become a region where the rights of humans and the environment are routinely ignored in the name of fighting the drug trade and terrorism.” And Mathew Razzano describes the tragedy of the abandoned RFK stadium in Washington, D.C., that continues to cost taxpayers, and does not benefit the community.

Also, Carol Burris of the Network for Public Education looks at what may have happened to the 1.3 million children who left the public school system during the first two years of the pandemic. And Bill Lueders says farewell to his mother, who passed away on December 29 at the age of ninety-eight, and takes one last look at the battle against her eviction from a senior care facility that he helped wage over the past year and two months—a struggle chronicled by The Progressive in a series of articles in 2021 and 2022.

Finally, please join us for an online book discussion with Frank Emspak about his new memoir Troublemaker: Saying No to Power, on Thursday, February 2 at 7:00 p.m. Central Standard Time. The event will include panelists Steve Early, (free-lance journalist and the author or co-author of five books about labor, politics, and veterans issues), Alice Herman (labor reporter whose work has appeared in The Progressive, In These Times, and other outlets), and Norman Stockwell (former board member of Workers Independent News and publisher of The Progressive magazine), along with questions from the audience. A link to join the online discussion will be available soon.

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 and get it mailed in time for the holidays.

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