ANDREW MOSS – For many people, the thought of this November’s general election inspires anything from apprehension to outright dread. Writing in the Atlantic recently, Adam Harris warned of a “voting disaster,” as historic forms of voter suppression disproportionately affecting minority voters (precinct closures, long waiting lines, onerous restrictions on vote-by-mail balloting) are now colliding with the immense challenges of conducting the election during a pandemic.
Category: July 2020
A Wake-Up Call: The Nuclear Threat!
KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL – Americans know how to engage. In the past four years alone, we’ve seen a groundswell of grass-roots activism on threats from climate change and gun violence to racial injustice and gender inequity. Today, we must add one more to the list: the threat of nuclear weapons. As Collina said, “Nuclear disarmament must be part of the new mass movement.â€
Canada’s Biggest Indigenous Police Force Has Zero Shooting Deaths In 26 Years
COLIN PERKEL – In its 26 years of existence, officers with Canada’s largest Indigenous police force have never shot and killed anyone and no officer has died in the line of duty, despite a grinding lack of resources and an absence of normal accountability mechanisms.
Five Pitfalls Black Lives Matter Must Avoid to Maintain Momentum and Achieve Meaningful Change
DANIEL HUNTER – There are steps the Black Lives Matter movement can take to carry on the remarkable energy it has built — and steps that could cause it to disappear.
The Few Violent Protesters Are Boosting Trump’s Electability
TOM H. HASTINGS – Bring the issues raised by Black Lives Matter back to the best policing possible and remove the politics by removing the violence. We as US citizens deserve nothing less.
Ten Reasons Why Defunding Police Should Lead to Defunding War
MEDEA BENJAMIN and ZOLTAN GROSSMAN – If we find indiscriminate state violence in our streets appalling, we should feel similarly about state violence abroad, and call for divesting from both police and the Pentagon, and reinvesting those taxpayer dollars to rebuild communities at home and abroad.
‘Historic Victory for Working People’: Seattle City Council Passes Progressive Tax on Big Business to Fund Relief
ANDREA GERMANOS – The Tax Amazon movement claimed “a historic victory for working people” on Monday, July 6, when Seattle’s city council passed a new tax on big businesses to fund local economic relief.
Humans Are an Endangered Species: Will They Act to Save Themselves?
LAWRENCE WITTNER – Although there is not much time left before the world succumbs to one or more catastrophes, human beings have been able to alter their behavior and institutions. Let’s hope they will rouse themselves and do so again.
The World has Loved, Hated and Envied the US. Now, for the First Time, We Pity it.
FINTAN O’TOOLE – Over more than two centuries, the United States has stirred a very wide range of feelings in the rest of the world: love and hatred, fear and hope, envy and contempt, awe and anger. But there is one emotion that has never been directed towards the US until now: pity.
5 Lessons from the K-pop Fans who Fizzled Trump’s Tulsa Rally, and the Black Organizers who Led the Way
TAMIKO BEYER – As K-pop fans and Black organizers and artists are demonstrating, joyful, powerful movements draw more people in and reflect the kind of world we want to live in.
US Policy Toward Israel and Palestine Is Inconsistent and Unjust
RUSSELL VANDENBROUCKE – What term should citizens apply to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s half-truths, insinuations, and misleading assertions about Palestine and Palestinian aspirations and negotiating stances, especially when repeated insistently enough by government officials to become enshrined, not simply as the party line, but as truth itself? How do we speak truth to power when power hunkers inside an echo chamber where it hears only its own truth?
‘Historic Day’ for Standing Rock as Pipeline Company Told to Shut Down, Remove Oil
KOLBY KICKINGWOMAN – A federal judge has ordered the Dakota Access Pipeline to shut down and remove all oil within 30 days, a huge win for Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, and the other plaintiffs.
George Floyd’s Murder Has Everything to Do With Rampant Militarism
WINSLOW MYERS – Militarism is found in the rhetoric of all those, from the president to Rush Limbaugh, who push a joyless, simplistic us-and-them worldview that tries to negate the existential reality that we are in this together, all challenged to acknowledge our interdependence and steward the life-support system that sustains us. For this great task, militarism is obsolete.
Recent Events Reveal the Bankruptcy of US Arms Addiction
KATHY KELLY – The world that our global empire is swiftly creating, through our devastating oil wars in the Middle East and our arriving cold wars with Russia and China, is a world without winners. We must resist signing contracts with weapon makers profiting from endless immiseration of the Middle East and needless superpower rivalries inviting full nuclear war. Such contracts, inked in blood, doom every corner of our world to perish as a battleground state.
Time to Move Federal Funds Away from Military “Security” In Order to Provide Real Security
DAVID SWANSON – The past month’s activism has changed a great deal. One thing it’s helped with is brushing aside the tired old argument over whether government should be big or small. In its place we have the much more useful argument over whether government should prioritize force and punishment, or focus on services and assistance.