December, 28 2011, 11:08am EDT
Rev. Jesse Jackson and PDA Challenge Democratic Party
WASHINGTON
Political legend Rev. Jesse Jackson will be joining Jean Ross, co-president of National Nurses United, which is leading the fight for Medicare for all and the financial transaction tax, and Steve Cobble, from the Institute for Policy Studies, for a conversation on progressive theory turned to action. Reverend Jackson has for decades campaigned for open and inclusive politics--outlined a quarter century ago by his "Rainbow Coalition" campaigns of 1984 and 1988.
In 1988, Jackson showed the possibility of this new politics with his bold decision to campaign in the Iowa caucuses. It was a redefining moment in American politics, and it laid the groundwork for progress that would eventually see Iowans provide Barack Obama with the 2008 caucus win that led to his presidency. Now, Reverend Jackson is returning to Iowa to argue for open caucuses, open politics, and democracy.
Progressive Democrats of America (PDA) is sponsoring "Building the Progressive Movement Inside and Outside the Democratic Party," a forum being held on the eve of the Iowa caucuses in Des Moines, Iowa. The event is on Friday, Dec. 30 from 1:30 to 5:30 p.m. at the First Unitarian Church, 1800 Bell Ave., in Des Moines.
Progressive activists, writers, and speakers from Iowa and beyond are participating in sessions moderated by John Nichols, author and writer for The Nation magazine. Panelists include Iowa activists Ed Fallon, radio host/Former Iowa State legislator; Jeff Cox, from Iowa Healthcare NOT Warfare; and Jay Howe, with Iowa People's Alliance.
PDA National Director Tim Carpenter and Deputy Field Coordinator Andrea Miller contribute their experience as progressive activists inside the halls of Congress and outside, creating "street heat."
A reception for the panelists and audience will follow the forum at 4:30 p.m. This free event is open to the public. Sponsors for the forum are Progressive Democrats of America, National Nurses United, and The Nation, with endorsement from the Progressive Coalition of Central Iowa, The Prairie Progressive, the Iowa Healthcare NOT Warfare Caucus Campaign, and the Fallon Forum. For further information, visit https://tinyurl.com/ProgressiveMovementForum or PDA's Website at pdamerica.org.
Progressive Democrats of America was founded in 2004 to transform the Democratic Party and U.S. politics by working inside and outside of the party by working to elect empowered progressives and by building the progressive movement in solidarity with with peace, justice, civil rights, environmental, and other reform efforts. For more information about PDA, please see PDAmerica.org.
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UK Union Workers Blockade Plants Arming Israel
"We stand here ashamed that the weapons used in the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestine are partly made on our own doorstep," one participating doctor said.
Dec 07, 2023
More than 1,000 union members with Workers for a Free Palestine blockaded four weapons factories in the United Kingdom Thursday that make components for planes being used by Israel to bomb Gaza.
The workers, who include teachers and healthcare and hospitality professionals, said they had shut down plants in Bournemouth, Lancashire, Brighton, and Glasgow.
"As healthcare workers, we are tired of mourning the deaths of our colleagues—fellow nurses, doctors, dentists, medical students, and other health workers—along with all of the Palestinians massacred by the Israeli regime," a participating doctor named Mesh of Health Workers for a Free Palestine toldTribune. "We stand here ashamed that the weapons used in the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestine are partly made on our own doorstep."
All of the plants targeted by the workers make components for the F-35 fighter jet. Israel has killed 21,731 people in Gaza since October 7, including 8,697 children, according to Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor. The Geneva-based group said the death toll has risen by 40% since a temporary cease-fire ended last week.
"Our government could only bring itself to advocate for a temporary pause in these atrocities," Mesh continued from one of the blockades. "Israel has now resumed its violence: turning hospitals into graveyards, using equipment manufactured in this very factory. As health workers, we have a moral responsibility to act and we will not rest until the occupation ends."
More than 600 workers shut down all three entrances to the Eaton Mission Systems plant in Wimborne near Bournemouth in Dorset, the group said. It added that plant makes in-flight refueling probes for F-35s and that Eaton Mission Systems has an open export license for all F-35-related equipment.
Protesters carried banners reading, "Weapons made here kill in Gaza" and, "This factory arms genocide."
More than 200 trade unionists also blocked two entrances at BAE System's Samlesbury Aerodrome in Lancashire, which makes rear fuselages for all F-35s, the group said.
Workers for a Free Palestine also blockaded the BAE Govan site in Glasgow, which makes components for the F35s and the Mk 38 Mod 2 machine gun system. In coordination, Brighton & Hove Action for Palestine protested the L3Harris Release & Integrated Solutions Ltd factory in Brighton, which equips U.S.-made F-16s and F-35s. Workers for a Free Palestine also said that allied groups were carrying out similar actions in Denmark, France, and the Netherlands. Workers protested Exxelia in Paris and Terma Group in Denmark and the Netherlands, Al Mayadeen Englishreported.
The European and U.K. trade unionists are responding to a call for solidarity from Palestinian trade unions and professional associations.
"Palestinian trade unions call on our counterparts internationally and all people of conscience to end all forms of complicity with Israel's crimes—most urgently halting the arms trade with Israel, as well as all funding and military research," Workers in Palestine wrote. "The time for action is now—Palestinian lives hang in the balance."
"As the British government refuses to call for a cease-fire and directly supports Israel's military attack, a rapidly growing movement of workers are clearly saying 'not in our name.'"
Specifically, the Palestinian workers called on the international labor movement to refuse to build or transport weapons for Israel, to pass union-wide motions backing those refusals, and to put pressure on complicit companies and governments.
"We salute all those in the trade union movement taking a stand to disrupt the flow of arms to Israel," Workers in Palestine said in a statement to Tribune. "Shutting down four factories across the U.K. today, along with several simultaneous blockades in Europe, are critical acts of solidarity, refusing to conduct business as usual in the face of Israel's relentless bombardment of Gaza and ongoing genocide."
"As the British government refuses to call for a cease-fire and directly supports Israel's military attack, a rapidly growing movement of workers are clearly saying 'not in our name,'" the workers continued.
Workers for a Free Palestine, whose members belong to unions including the National Education Union (NEU); the British Medical Association; the University and College Union (UCU); the Broadcasting, Entertainment, Communications, and Theater Union (BECTU); and the Bakers, Food, and Allied Workers Union (BFAWU), is demanding that the British government stop being complicit in Israeli war crimes, that a permanent cease-fire be enacted immediately, and that Israel end its occupation of Palestine.
Before Thursday's action, the group had targeted an Elbit Systems subsidiary factory in Kent in October and another BAE Systems plant in Rochester in November, Tribune reported.
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'End the War on Gaza... End It Now': Doctors Decry Relentless Israeli Attack
"We are in the darkest time for the right to health in our lifetimes," said one U.N. expert.
Dec 07, 2023
Doctors treating wounded patients on the ground in Gaza and medical experts watching in horror from the outside pleaded with world leaders on Thursday to push for an immediate, sustained cease-fire as Israeli forces continue to pummel the besieged Palestinian territory, leaving hospitals unable to cope with the rapid influx of airstrike victims.
Doctors Without Borders, known internationally as Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), said that for the first time since Israel's latest war on Gaza began in early October, the number of deceased people who were brought to the MSF-backed al-Aqsa Hospital on Wednesday "surpassed the number of injured people."
"The hospital is full, the morgue is full," MSF wrote on social media. "We call on Israeli forces to stop the indiscriminate bombing of the Gaza Strip and protect civilians and civilian infrastructure."
At the two-month mark of Israel's assault, Gaza's healthcare system is barely standing, with many hospitals damaged by airstrikes or forced to cease operations due to a lack of fuel, anesthesia, sanitation equipment, and other critical supplies. Israel's blockade has deprived the territory's medical facilities of electricity, forcing them to generators and—when those have run out of fuel— phone lights.
"This war is raging because of a lack of political leadership. End the war on Gaza, and end it now."
Near-constant Israeli airstrikes and the lack of fuel caused by the blockade have forced ambulance services to shut down in parts of Gaza, undermining emergency rescue efforts.
Hundreds of healthcare personnel are among the more than 16,000 people in Gaza who have been killed by Israeli forces since October 7, 90% of whom have been civilians, according to one
estimate. The United Nations has recorded more than 360 Israeli attacks on Gaza healthcare services.
Medical workers experiencing firsthand the devastating consequences of Israel's bombardment and siege have provided harrowing—and often sickening—accounts of the carnage.
(Warning: What follows is a graphic description of the scene at one hospital in southern Gaza.)
British war surgeon Tom Potokar, who is working for the International Committee of the Red Cross at the European Hospital in the embattled southern Gaza city of Khan Younis, toldThe Independent that he has "seen far too many children whose lives have been destroyed." Israeli forces have stormed Khan Younis in recent days, imperiling displaced people in an area previously deemed a "safe zone."
"I've treated a four-month-old with significant burn injuries. I treated an eight-year-old that had an open fracture of his skull with an exposed brain," said Potokar. "It is just awful to see and it's so relentless. It's just not stopping, they keep coming in every day."
Addressing anyone who doubts the appalling images and accounts emerging from the strip by the minute, Potokar said that "if you could bring any person here who was not sure, and you place them here, and you got them to smell the stench of rotting flesh, to see the sight of maggots creeping from wounds of a person who has necrotic flesh and to hear the screams of kids because there's not enough analgesia, and they want their mum, who's not going to appear because she's dead—I think people might feel a bit different about this."
On Sunday, the World Health Organization's (WHO) executive board is set to hold a rare emergency meeting on the spiraling healthcare crisis in Gaza, where infectious diseases such as Hepatitis A are beginning to spread in the territory's makeshift and badly overcrowded shelters for displaced people, who are struggling to survive without proper medical supplies and uncontaminated food and water.
"Gaza's health system is on its knees and near total collapse," WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Wednesday. "We need peace for health."
Tlaleng Mofokeng, a physician from South Africa and the United Nations special rapporteur on the right to health, issued a scathing statement Thursday accusing the Israeli military of waging an "unrelenting war" on Gaza's healthcare system and warning that "the practice of medicine is under attack."
"As a practicing medical doctor, I cannot fathom what my Gazan colleagues are enduring. They are working while their colleagues and loved ones are under attack. Many have been killed while treating their patients," said Mofokeng, who called for an immediate cease-fire. "We are in the darkest time for the right to health in our lifetimes."
"We bear witness to a shameful war on healthcare workers," she added. "This war is raging because of a lack of political leadership. End the war on Gaza, and end it now."
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Sanders Votes No on Giving Israel Aid to Continue 'Inhumane War' on Gaza
"I do not believe that we should give the right-wing extremist Netanyahu government an additional $10.1 billion with no strings attached."
Dec 07, 2023
Sen. Bernie Sanders was the lone member of the Senate Democratic caucus to oppose advancing a $110.5 billion supplemental foreign aid measure on Wednesday, expressing opposition to the bill's unconditional military assistance for the Israeli government.
"I voted NO on the foreign aid supplemental bill today for one reason," Sanders (I-Vt.) said in a statement. "I do not believe that we should give the right-wing extremist Netanyahu government an additional $10.1 billion with no strings attached to continue their inhumane war against the Palestinian people."
"Israel has the absolute right to defend itself against the Hamas terrorists who attacked them on October 7," Sanders added. "They do not have the legal or moral right to kill thousands of innocent Palestinian men, women, and children."
The aid package, which also includes billions in military assistance for Ukraine, failed to clear a procedural hurdle Wednesday, with every Republican voting no over the absence of immigration policy changes that progressives have condemned as draconian. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) flipped his initial yes vote to no in a maneuver that will allow him to bring the bill forward again at a later date.
According to a summary released by the Senate Appropriations Committee, the supplemental package contains over $10 billion in military aid for Israel, which already receives roughly $4 billion in assistance from the U.S. per year and has gotten tens of thousands of bombs, artillery shells, and other weaponry since the Hamas-led October 7 attack.
The measure is largely in line with a request issued in October by the Biden White House, which has sought to expedite U.S. arms shipments to Israel even as the nation's military is using American-made weaponry to commit heinous war crimes in the Gaza Strip.
One human rights monitor estimated earlier this week that at least 90% of the people killed by Israeli forces in Gaza since October 7 have been civilians.
Sanders, who has faced progressive criticism and outrage for rejecting calls for a permanent cease-fire in Gaza, said in a Senate floor speech on Monday that Israel "must dramatically change its approach to minimize civilian harm and lay out a wider political process that can secure lasting peace."
The senator conceded during his remarks that there is no evidence Israel has altered its approach in response to light pressure from top U.S. officials, pointing to recent bombings of United Nations schools and other civilian infrastructure.
"Israel's indiscriminate approach is, in my view, offensive to most Americans, it is in violation of U.S. and international law, and it undermines the prospects for lasting peace and security," said Sanders.
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