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 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, “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 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, 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 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, 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 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 this week from Germany about the grassroots movement to oppose the extraction of coal in the town of Lützerath. Jeff Abbott reports from Costa Rica on new obstacles being put up for migrants seeking asylum. And Umme Hoque of the Debt Collective pens an op-ed 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, “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 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 in National Statuary Hall in the Capitol, and President Biden placed a bust 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 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 on February 1 at the age of seventy-three. Hatheway taught at Edgewood College in Madison, Wisconsin, until his retirement in 2022. He was also publisher from 1982-1988 of Among Friends, the “news magazine for gays and lesbians of Wisconsin.” In the October/November 2022 issue of The Progressive, Hatheway wrote on fascism, pointing out, “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. You can also stil get a signed copy of Frank’s book with a donation to The Progressive at: Progressive.org/troublemaker.

P.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.

P.P.P.S. – If you like this weekly newsletter, please consider forwarding it to a friend. If you know someone who would like to subscribe to this free weekly email, please share this link: http://tiny.cc/ProgressiveNewsletter.

P.P.P.P.S. – If you don’t already subscribe to The Progressive in print or digital form, please consider doing so today. Also, if you have a friend or relative who you feel should hear from the many voices for progressive change within our pages, please consider giving a gift subscription.

P.P.P.P.S. – Thank you so much to everyone who has already donated to support The Progressive! We need you now more than ever. If you have not done so already, please take a moment to support hard-hitting, independent reporting on issues that matter to you. Your donation today will keep us on solid ground in 2023 and will help us continue to grow in the coming years. You can use the wallet envelope in the current issue of the magazine, or click on the “Donate” button below to join your fellow progressives in sustaining The Progressive as a voice for peace, social justice, and the common good.