Dear Progressive Reader,
I spent a couple of days in Berlin, Germany earlier this month. One of the places I visited was the St. Marienkirche (Saint Mary’s Church) in the eastern part of the city. It was at this church, on September 13, 1964, that Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered a historic sermon to a capacity crowd of East Berliners. King’s words, more than 55 years ago, ring true today. As Yohuru Williams wrote last year, “it is appropriate, as we approach Martin Luther King Day, to recall the Reverend Dr. King’s views on the efficacy of erecting walls to separate human beings.”
King had been invited to speak in West Berlin by then-Mayor Willy Brandt. But he also received an invitation to speak in the East. Nervous U.S. officials, fearing King’s politics, had confiscated his passport at the airport, but undeterred, King crossed over into East Berlin at the notorious “Checkpoint Charlie” by simply presenting his American Express card as identification. He delivered two speeches that evening, the second at another nearby church, because the first audience overflowed the available seats; both were preserved for posterity by the East German Stasi (State Security Service). King told the crowd, “Regardless of the barriers of race, creed, ideology, or nationality, there is an inescapable destiny which binds us together. There is a common humanity which makes us sensitive to the sufferings of one another.” In this era of divisions and “tribalism,” we would all do well to remember King’s words as we celebrate, on Monday, the annual Martin Luther King Jr. holiday.
On Tuesday January 14, Democratic presidential hopefuls again took to the debate stage, albeit in smaller numbers than in any of the past debates. As Ruth Conniff reports, “the moderators did all they could to start a fight, but Sanders and Warren refused to bite.” In an unusual 50-50 split, she notes, billionaire Tom Steyer joined with the two more progressive candidates to counter the messaging offered by the three more centrist candidates on stage (as well as the moderators). “It was a paradigm shift,” she writes, “in part, because for so long the ambient pro-establishment, pro-wealth bias in Democratic debates has been so overwhelming that it has come to sound like simple common sense.”
As Democrats looked to Iowa, Donald Trump came to another Midwestern state, holding a rally in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. “We are a working-class party,” he told the crowd, in spite of all evidence to the contrary. As Roger Bybee describes, Trump used the rally to portray the Democratic Party as a “a malicious, disloyal force with sinister and destructive plans for the nation.” The rally’s mean-spirited tone and repeated nods to authoritarianism may give a preview of the rhetoric to come on the campaign trail and in August’s Republican National Convention. Meanwhile, as cartoonist Mark Fiore illustrates, Trump continues his role as unitary executive, ignoring laws like the 1973 War Powers Act. And, as Sarah Lahm notes from nearby Minnesota, “xenophobia and a scarcity mindset—two clear cards in the Trump playbook—have won out in Beltrami County.”
Keep reading, and we will keep bringing you important articles on these and other issues of our time. And, for the new year, don’t forget to click here to order your 2020 Hidden History of the United States calendar from The Progressive!
Sincerely,
Norman Stockwell
Publisher
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