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Dear Progressive Reader,
Memphis, Tennessee, has fired another officer involved in the traffic stop that led to the beating and death of the father, photographer, and skateboarder Tyre Nichols. Nichols funeral ([link removed]) this week included statements from Vice President Kamala Harris and a eulogy by the Reverend Al Sharpton. In a statement this week, Wisconsin Representative Sheila Stubbs said ([link removed]) , “In the wake of this unlawful death, a heavy feeling weighs in the chest of every American. There is no room to continue denying the impact racism has on policing and our criminal justice system while the deaths we mourn are routine. Tyre Nichols must not just be another soon-forgotten name in the list of Black lives lost. We cannot allow more tragic losses to be caused by our public safety officers; it is past time to address the systemic issues that disproportionately put our Black neighbors at
risk.”
The circumstances of Nichols's killing highlight the fact that the system of policing in this country is deeply flawed and deeply racist. As Kiki Monifa wrote in an op-ed ([link removed]) more than thirty years after video revealed the brutal beating of Rodney King in Los Angeles, “We need more education to eliminate racism in all walks of life and especially in law enforcement. We can’t wait another thirty years for things to improve.” In his landmark 2017 book The End of Policing, sociologist Alex Vitale notes, “The problem is not police training, police diversity, or police methods. The problem is policing itself.” Vitale, whose book is available through The Progressive ([link removed]) , goes on to note: “Part of the problem stems from a ‘warrior mentality.’ Police often think of themselves as soldiers in a battle with the public rather than guardians of public
safety.” As Vice President Kamala Harris said in her official statement ([link removed]) last week, “To truly honor Tyre Nichols’ memory, and the memory of so many others before him, we must demand that our justice system lives up to its name.”
Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives have begun their investigations of the Biden Administration. As cartoonist Mark Fiore illustrates ([link removed]) , this session of Congress promises to be a crazy series of conspiracy theories and obfuscation. Meanwhile, real action on real issues, like the Federal Trade Commission’s inquiries into Big Tech monopolies continue. As David Rosen reports ([link removed]) this week, “As of December 2022, [Commission Chair Lina] Khan and an aggressive FTC have launched twelve antitrust suits.”
Elsewhere around the globe, Michael Makowski writes ([link removed]) this week from Germany about the grassroots movement to oppose the extraction of coal in the town of Lützerath. Jeff Abbott reports ([link removed]) from Costa Rica on new obstacles being put up for migrants seeking asylum. And Umme Hoque of the Debt Collective pens an op-ed ([link removed]) on the unity of the struggles for health care access, abortion rights, and the elimination of medical debt. “This year is key to defending and bolstering a more inclusive version of democracy,” she says. “If we want to shift politics, we need to come together across issues to fight for the world we want. We can’t let them divide us.”
Today marks the 110th anniversary of the birth of Rosa Parks. In a review for the current issue of The Progressive of a new book, Rosa Parks Beyond the Bus, Brian Gilmore notes ([link removed]) , “Parks, as [author H.H.] Leonards shows us, was a human being who demonstrated how to live a purposeful life.” Another new book, reviewed last summer ([link removed]) by Eleanor J. Bader, brings Jeanne Theoharis’s 2015 landmark biography, The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks, into a new form for teachers and young adults. Parks died in October 2005 at the age of ninety-two, and was the first woman ever to lie in honor in the United States Capitol. A statue of her was placed ([link removed]) in National Statuary Hall in the Capitol, and President Biden placed a bust
([link removed]) of Parks in the Oval Office on the day of his Inauguration in 2021. In December 2005, then-U.S. Representative John Conyers Jr. wrote ([link removed]) for The Progressive, “Rosa Parks led by example. Hers was not the loudest voice or the most forceful. She did not create change by arrogance or violence. And while she was an apostle of the nonviolence movement, Mrs. Parks never saw herself that way. She never sought the limelight and was never really a political figure at all. But it was important to her that people understood the government, understood their rights, and understood the Constitution that we are still trying to perfect today. . . . She taught us how to struggle and how to triumph.”
This week we also remember historian, author, and activist Jay Hatheway who passed away ([link removed]) on February 1 at the age of seventy-three. Hatheway taught at Edgewood College in Madison, Wisconsin, until his retirement ([link removed]) in 2022. He was also publisher from 1982-1988 of Among Friends ([link removed]) , the “news magazine for gays and lesbians of Wisconsin.” In the October/November 2022 issue of The Progressive, Hatheway wrote on fascism, pointing out ([link removed]) , “the origins of fascism can be traced back to a negative reception of the European Enlightenment of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. . . . Racism would be gradually attached to nationalism so that many Europeans conceived of a biologized hierarchy of nations, from high to low,
which justified European imperialism.”
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. - If you missed our online book discussion with Frank Emspak and his new memoir Troublemaker: Saying No to Power, on February 2, the event with panelists Steve Early, (free-lance journalist and the author or co-author of five books about labor, politics, or 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) is still available as on online archive on YouTube ([link removed]) . You can also stil get a signed copy of Frank’s book with a donation to The Progressive at: Progressive.org/troublemaker ([link removed]) .
P.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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