Dear Progressive Reader,

Events constantly occur that displace others in the attention of the public and the news media. In this case it was a second flying object of unknown origin, shot down quickly this time over Alaska, that may or may not have been spying on the United States. As Mark Fiore illustrates, in this week’s cartoon (drawn before the second flying object), “The Chinese surveillance balloon that floated across the United States recently was not exactly the cutting edge of super-secret spy technology. . . . What the balloon did masterfully, however, was stoke rage and finger-pointing on the ground.” It seems to have successfully diverted attention from Special Counsel investigations and perhaps even President Joe Biden’s “State of the Union” address.

The State of the Union speech lasted nearly one hour and fifteen minutes (it was just fifteen minutes less than Bill Clinton’s record-length hour-and-twenty-eight-minute SOTU in January 2000, and double the average length of the speeches of many of his predecesors—with the exception of Barack Obama and Donald Trump). Not bad for a guy that rightwing media and many politicians claim is “too old” and “too boring.” Biden’s speech was lively, upbeat, and at times combative. It was also a far cry from Gerald Ford’s 1975 SOTU where Ford famously said, “I must say to you that the state of the Union is not good.” Biden said otherwise, noting: “We are the only country that has emerged from every crisis stronger than when we entered it.” However, just as in Ford’s era, there remain many obstacles and roadblocks ahead for Biden. Ford, coming out of the “national nightmare” of Watergate, acknowledged: “Some people question their Government's ability to make hard decisions and stick with them; they expect Washington politics as usual. . . . The American people want action, and it will take both the Congress and the President to give them what they want.” It remains to be seen if the Biden Administration and the Republican-led House can address the deep needs and looming crises of debt default, gun violence, police misconduct, and ever-accelerating climate change.

This week on our website, Bill Blum gives his verdict on misconduct by Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court; Michael Felsen looks at new employee protections for undocumented workers; Hank Kalet speaks out on the rights of “adjuncts”—the “gig workers” of higher education; and Jacob Goodwin analyzes the ways in which voucher schemes are shortchanging students with disabilities. Plus Ed Rampell reviews the new film that was produced by former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick, Killing County, about police violence in House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s home district; and Joe George reviews the new thriller Knock at the Cabin, which, he says, is ultimately about care. “For Americans in particular, this is a salient, urgent point. Even as we continue to battle hatred in our own country and America’s legacy of enslavement and genocide, even as we exercise self-care and understand that, for many of us, survival is resistance, our actions affect the entire world,” he writes. “We must choose to care.”

This week we also got news of the release, from San Quentin State Prison, of writer and podcaster Rahsaan “New York” Thomas. His sentence had been commuted more than a year ago by California Governor Gavin Newsom, but it took a published report about Thomas’s case, and the cases of 122 others in California prisons who should be free, to finally move the machinery of the justice system. Thomas has written for many publications, including The Progressive, and co-hosts a Pulitzer-prize-nominated podcast about life behind bars. He intends to continue his media work on behalf of prisoners. We wish him well in his ongoing work.

Finally, yesterday marked the 125th birthday of German playwright and anti-fascist Bertolt Brecht. Brecht was the author of dozens of plays that addressed the political issues of his day, and ours. In 2016, as Donald Trump was revving up his campaign for the presidency, I wrote an article for Madison’s newspaper The Capital Times that quoted from Brecht’s famous work, The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, a play that examined the rise of Hitler through the dramatic device of 1920’s Chicago gangsters. In 1947, Brecht, who at the time was living in California as a refugee of Nazi Germany, was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee for his political beliefs. In a statement that he was not allowed to deliver in testimony, Brecht wrote, “At the beginning, only a very few people were capable of seeing the connection between the reactionary restrictions in the field of culture and the ultimate assaults upon the physical life of a people itself.”

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.

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