All Views Articles for 2016–08-23-dear
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Kevin Gosztola ‘United Against The Black Snake’: Water Protectors Respond To Army Corps’ Eviction Notice A coalition of grassroots groups at the Oceti Sakowin camp at Standing Rock indicated it would reject an Army Corps of Engineers eviction notice, “stand united in defiance of the black snake,” and... Read more |
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Robert Parry Washington Post’s ‘Fake News’ Guilt The "fake news" theme has captivated The Washington Post and the mainstream U.S. media so much that it is stooping to McCarthyistic smears against news outlets that don’t toe the State Department’s propaganda line Read more |
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Bill Quigley Twelve Ideas Post-Election from Front Line Organizers When you find yourself in a suddenly darkened room, what do you do? Some rush blindly to where they think the door might be. Others stand still, let their eyes get adjusted to the different... Read more |
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Marc Becker Hasta Siempre, Fidel Castro The passing of Fidel Castro is one of those events that highlights a deep divide that separates the United States from most of the world. While the mainstream media in the United States reports from... Read more |
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Steve Wasserman Reflections on the Death of Fidel Nearly 60 years ago, Herbert Matthews of The New York Times interviewed a rebel-with-a-cause most people thought was dead. Matthews’ scoop in the tangled jungle of Cuba’s Sierra Maestra proved that... Read more |
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Jim Naureckas Appeal to the Working Class? Don’t Bother, Says Krugman In the wake of a disastrous Election Day, does the Democratic Party need to present economic policies that have more to offer the majority of voters? Don’t bother, argues New York Times columnist... Read more |
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Nada Elia ‘Tis the Season, to Boycott! One of the accusations most frequently lobbed at BDS activists (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel) is that “boycotts are divisive.” Apparently, they drive a wedge in society, pitting... Read more |
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Lisa Graves 5 Things to Know about Billionaire Betsy DeVos, Trump Education Choice Billionaire Betsy DeVos, a major GOP funder and party activist from Michigan, has been tapped by Donald Trump to become the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Education next year. Many have decried... Read more |
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Josh Bivens Already a Big Gap Between Trump's Promises to the Middle Class and His Policies During his campaign, President-elect Donald Trump promised that he would take the side of American workers against economic elites when evaluating policy. Yet, the policy proposals he put forth... Read more |
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Daniel I. Weiner Obama's Last Chance to Take on Dark Money During his time in office, President Barack Obama has repeatedly criticized the Supreme Court’s controversial Citizens United decision, and spoken out with particular force on the need to curb the... Read more |
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Eric Margolis Suez: The End of Europe's Empires Sixty years ago, I was home after school, sitting in our living room on New York’s Central Park West, reading a history of Rome and listening to Dvorak’s splendid cello concerto when the announcer on... Read more |
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César Chelala Meeting Fidel As a young medical student in Argentina I had been fascinated by Fidel Castro and his rebel combatants and followed with interest their advance from the mountains to the plains to the capital city of... Read more |
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Christopher Brauchli Transition, Tweets, and Trump The gods have their own rules. — Ovid, Metamorphosis It’s been a couple of really exciting weeks for President-elect Trump and a very busy time at that. Some visitors have come by just to establish... Read more |
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Rev. Billy Talen Standing Rock: A Moment of Clarity for Progressive Activists Earth-force meets money-force at Standing Rock. I’m so relieved I’m here. It scares me to think that I might have missed this. We get up at dawn. Four hundred people walk slowly in a light snow to... Read more |
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Belén Fernández Fidel Castro in Context The revolutionary's achievements in the face of US meddling made him a powerful symbol of resistance against hegemony. Read more |
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Marjorie Cohn Philippines’ Duterte Seeks Peace Filipino President Duterte oversaw a brutal anti-drug campaign but is now seeking peace with leftist revolutionaries and rejecting U.S. pressure for more counterinsurgency warfare Read more |
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Derek Davison Deputy NSC Advisor Pick McFarland: Treat Middle Easterners Like Kids On Friday, Donald Trump’s transition team announced that Fox News national security analyst Kathleen Troia McFarland will serve as his Deputy National Security Advisor, working under National... Read more |
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Norman Solomon Euphemism as Journalism: Distracting the Audience by Focusing on Trump's Skill at Distraction Euphemism isn’t journalism, but conflating the two can be irresistible for mainline journalists when candor might seem overly intrepid. Two months before Inauguration Day, a straw in the US media... Read more |
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Bianca Jagger Ending Violence Against Women and Girls: If Not Now, When? For over three decades I have campaigned for human rights throughout the world. I founded the Bianca Jagger Human Rights Foundation (BJHRF) in 2005 to be a force for change, and a voice for the most... Read more |
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Nozomi Hayase Awakening Courage in the Era of Trumpism American democracy is in deep crisis. As with every election cycle, electoral politics this year failed to provide true therapy for the pathology of the corporate state. There is no diagnosis of... Read more |
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Lakshmi Puri Facing Grim Reality on International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women Each year on November 25, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women is commemorated. A commemoration in essence is an opportunity to reflect on the challenges, prove that... Read more |
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Frank Ackerman Green State America: How to Keep America’s Climate Promises In January, Donald Trump will endorse climate denial, renouncing the Clean Power Plan and climate targets in general. This will damage the fragile global momentum toward emission reduction,... Read more |
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Antonia Zerbisias Canada At Risk of Sinking in Trump's Political Tsunami When economic waves come out of Washington, they rock Canada. Now, with the Donald Trump tsunami heading towards the White House, Canadians fear their already floundering economy could be sunk... Read more |
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Gideon Levy When Is Anti-Semitism Not Anti-Semitism? When It’s From a Trump-Loving ‘Friend’ of Israel The only message of congratulations that Steve Bannon has received from abroad, apparently, since being named the senior strategic adviser in Donald Trump’s White House, is one that arrived on... Read more |
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Paul Pillar Ideology Is Supplanting Intelligence With Donald Trump’s earliest appointments to senior national security positions, some of the disturbing implications for the making of foreign policy of his own lack of qualifications for office are... Read more |
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Edward Hunt Obama, Trump, and the Future of US Foreign Policy Amid all the uncertainty about what a Trump presidency means for the future role of the United States in the world, one possibility is that Trump will embrace some variant of the policies that have... Read more |
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Randall Amster Black Friday and White Noise Here we go again, right on the heels of gorging ourselves in preparation for the frenetic commercialism of the holiday season. The relentless pursuit of consumer “goods” (which are almost universally... Read more |
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Kristine Mattis Embracing A New Normal (Not of the Trump Variety) I attended a Catholic university, and during my time in college, I embarked on several school-sponsored retreats. While semi-religious, these days-long outings in the wilderness really more resembled... Read more |
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Tobita Chow TPP Is Dead. Time For a Progressive Trade Vision. Trump’s election has killed the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP). Trump made it one of his top campaign promises to end the TPP, and his election win was a signal to supporters of the TPP in both... Read more |
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William Hoynes Learning the Wrong Lesson from the Trump Victory Amidst all the post-election analysis, a consensus explanation of what propelled Donald Trump to victory is emerging among economically comfortable white liberals. The short version: Trump... Read more |
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Julia Harumi Mass My Mother Was Incarcerated in an Internment Camp as a Child. She Tells Us 2016 Reminds Her of 1942. My mother was seven years old when she and her family were evacuated from the West Coast and forced to live in an Army barrack behind barbed wire in an internment camp in Heart Mountain , Wyoming... Read more |
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Stephanie Van Hook How to Turn a Family Gathering Into a Laboratory for Political Healing I don’t know what it’s like to have a family where everyone agrees politically. I did not grow up in an activist household where even if there were disagreements about the details there might be an... Read more |
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Gabe Mandell No Giving Thanks On Carbon Emissions: ‘Business as Usual’ Strategy Literally Doesn’t Cut It I didn’t travel anywhere for the Thanksgiving holiday this year, yet I am counting my blessings because, together with other petitioners under age 18, I was back in King County Superior Court Tuesday... Read more |
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Medea Benjamin Deconstructing Thanksgiving at Standing Rock It is with a heavy heart that I travel to Standing Rock to give thanks and serve meals to the water protectors who, in the freezing weather, have braved attack dogs, tear gas, water cannons, rubber... Read more |
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John Nichols Republicans Cannot Claim a Mandate When Hillary Clinton Has a 2-Million-Vote Lead A higher percentage of Americans rejected Trump in 2016 than rejected Romney in 2012. Read more |
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Deborah S. Rogers Solidarity Politics to Resist the Coming Regime Many have issued clarion calls for resistance against the neofascist headed for the White House, his odious henchmen in tow. Few, however, have outlined all the steps needed to block Trump’s... Read more |
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Olivia Alperstein Get an IUD While You Can With a new Congress threatening birth control access, millions of women are looking at long-term solutions. Read more |
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Bob Herbert The War on the Poor Is Already Underway It was just a little over two months ago that the Census Bureau reported the very good news that real median household incomes had increased by 5.2% from 2014 to 2015, and that the poverty rate had... Read more |
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Mark Engler Why Targeting Corporate Democrats Is Part of the Fight Against Trump On November 14, six days after the election of Donald Trump, some 40 young people walked into the office of New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, calling on the senior lawmaker to step aside in his bid to be... Read more |
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Adam Johnson Hey Media, We Don’t Need Another Glossy Profile on That Nazi Dork There’s been a recent wave of press for a certain unnamed Nazi Dork who threw a gathering in Washington, DC, for his Nazi friends this past week, attempting to use the Trump victory to raise the... Read more |
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Jim Hightower Bing Bing, Bong Bong, Bing Bing What an election year. I feel like I've been transported through a cosmic squirrel hole and into a baffling political universe where facts are fiction, bizarre is normal and corruption is a virtue... Read more |
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Frank Clemente 6 Worst Things About Trump Tax Plan If Congress takes up tax reform in early 2017, the White House will push cuts that would benefit the wealthy, including the president-elect himself and his family members. Read more |
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Neve Gordon Israel’s New Friends in the Trump White House Israel’s leaders and their right-wing Jewish allies in the United States have no problem stomaching anti-Semitism so long as the anti-Semite supports Zionism. But if an anti-Semite can be a Zionist then anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism are not the same. Read more |
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Mark Schuller End of an Empire? A View of Clinton's Loss and Trump's Triumph from Haiti Seen from outside the U.S., this descent into fascism is not surprising Read more |
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Cayte Bosler Showdown at Standing Rock Is Not Just About the Dakota Access Pipeline The Sioux are not alone among indigenous people pushing for the rights and protections they've long been denied Read more |
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Jake Johnson Yes, the Democratic Party Did Abandon the Working Class It's not as if the Democratic Party was ever "the party of the people" — at least not in the mystical sense depicted by both party loyalists and some on the left who are nostalgic for the liberal... Read more |
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David Michael Green Which Part of the 1930s Did You Not Get? Americans Finally Learn To Cooperate On A National Suicide Project What you assist... you will become Read more |
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Robert C. Koehler Bending the Arc Maybe this much is true. Donald Trump, pseudo-president-elect, loser of the real election, charismatic stump-speech populist whose actual ability to govern may well be non-existent, has inflicted... Read more |
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Dean Baker Turning the White House into the New Headquarters for Trump University There are sharp differences between the political parties in many areas, but one principle on which there has been a longstanding agreement is that the presidency should not be used as a marketing... Read more |
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Kate Aronoff The Standing Rock Protests Are a Taste of Things To Come The way opponents of the Dakota Access pipeline have been treated by police is likely to be replicated on a massive scale under Donald Trump Read more |
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Oscar Reyes Trump Can’t Hold Back the Tide of Climate Action Market forces, state and local action, and strong social movements could blunt the impacts of a denialist White House. Read more |
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Pierre Tristam It’ll Be Alt-Right There’s an in-your-face quality to those trying to assure those distraught after Trump's win. It's intentional and triumphant, as with any reversal of roles in an insane asylum. Read more |
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Jim Naureckas ‘Nothing to See Here’ Headlines Conceal Police Violence at Dakota Access The New York Times ( 11/21/16 ) gets a failing grade for its headline over a report on escalating police violence against Native American activists and others defending the Missouri River against the... Read more |
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William Hartung Donald Trump and The Pentagon: Reagonomics on Steroids? Is a Trump presidency good news for the military-industrial complex? Read more |
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David Cole Why Trump’s Proposed Targeting of Muslims Would be Unconstitutional As a candidate, Donald Trump notoriously called for a ban on the entrance of all Muslims, a database to track Muslims in the United States, for aggressive surveillance of “the mosques,” and for... Read more |
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Kirk Freudenburg Dealing with Emperor Trump: Field Notes from Ancient Rome The Roman poet, Virgil, wrote his classic epic, The Aeneid, in the aftermath of decades of political dysfunction and violence. Riots and bloody brawls, revenge killings, and periodic outbursts of... Read more |
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Norman Solomon In Resistance to Trump, “Community” Should Be a Verb Against a Trump regime that is totally unacceptable, we’ll need resistance that’s sustainable. Like a healthy forest, the resistance will depend on great diversity to thrive—a wide range of people... Read more |
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Lacy MacAuley What Next? White Supremacists in Suits and Ties in Washington Fascists are coming out of the closet. They may have new haircuts, but their thinking is old and tired. That’s why we need you. Now. Read more |
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George Lakoff A Minority President Trump: Why the Polls Failed and What the Majority Can Do 1: The American Majority Hillary Clinton won the majority of votes in this year’s presidential election. The loser, for the majority of voters, will now be a minority president-elect. Don't let... Read more |
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Tracy Rector Big Business Is Threatening Mother Earth Right now, corporations threaten the lifeblood of Mother Earth. There are thousands of water protectors mobilized against the Dakota Access pipeline (DAPL) in Cannonball, North Dakota, on the... Read more |
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Robert Reich The First 100 Day Resistance Agenda Trump’s First 100 Day agenda includes repealing environmental regulations, Obamacare, and the Dodd-Frank Act, giving the rich a huge tax cut, and much worse. Here’s the First 100 Day resistance... Read more |
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Robert Parry Whose Fake News Gets a Pass? NYT Advocates Internet Censorship The New York Times wants a system of censorship for the Internet to block what it calls “fake news,” but the Times ignores its own record of publishing “fake news” Read more |
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Tom Goldtooth, Annie Leonard What Standing Rock Needs Obama to Do Quickly—Before Trump Takes Over Trump will try to fast-track fossil fuel projects across the country. That makes the final months of President Obama’s term more important than ever. Read more |
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Andy Rowell Meet Donald the Climate Clown Later today in Stockholm, a conference organized by the business group, the International Chamber of Commerce, examines “ Bridging the Climate Change Policy Gap .” The conference flier asks the... Read more |
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Jim Naureckas Far From a Distraction, Hamilton Feud Calls Attention to the Real Issue: Trump’s Historic Unpopularity In the wake of the celebration of Vice President–Elect Mike Pence being confronted by the cast of Hamilton —and tweets from Donald Trump confirming that the message had been received—came a backlash... Read more |
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Robert Freeman The Clean Deal: A Strategy for Healing and Renewal The country needs to heal. It can do that by renewing itself. Both are possible, but only if the parties put aside their treasured shibboleths and commit to a twenty-first century economic... Read more |
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Jeff Hauser To Defend Democracy, We Must Demand Financial Transparency from Trump From executive appointments to policy, understanding Trump's personal financial interests will be essential to judging his adminstration Read more |
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Chris Hedges We Are All Deplorables My relatives in Maine are deplorables . I cannot write on their behalf. I can write in their defense. They live in towns and villages that have been ravaged by deindustrialization. The bank in... Read more |
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Christian Parenti Listening to Trump What I learned by going down a weeks-long, late-night, YouTube rabbit hole Read more |
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Rebecca Gordon Life Under Trump: Night Terrors and Daytime Hopes The night after the election, this long-time pacifist dreamed she shot a big white man carrying an arsenal of guns. He was wandering around a room full of people, waving a pistol and threatening to... Read more |
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Paul Buchheit The Terrorism Targeting Our Grandchildren Four decades of American narcissism and greed and exceptionalism have allowed the super-rich to dictate the future path of our nation. We're paying the price now, with environmental disasters,... Read more |
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César Chelala Hamilton vs Trump “Apologize!” was President elect Donald Trump conclusion of two messages he wrote to the cast of Hamilton, one of the most successful Broadway musicals in recent times. He was thus responding to the... Read more |
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Christopher Brauchli The Swamp Drain the swamp. —Donald J. Trump It’s great news for Kansas-and who’d have thought it. Of course it hasn’t happened yet, but it seems to be a possibility. When President-elect Donald Trump was... Read more |
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Augie Lindmark After a Long Week, the Single Payer Movement Marches On For many supporters of universal healthcare, last week felt nauseating. From local to national politics, the notion of health as a human right was barred from public policies. At the state level,... Read more |
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Todd Gitlin Bad Faith Has Many Brands Defeat has many parents, and buck-passing cannot be the national pastime. Read more |
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Julie Chinitz Cleaning the Corporate Dirt from the GOP Budget While Donald Trump is busy appointing corporate lobbyists and white supremacists to key positions on his staff, Congress remains in session. Lawmakers are now working on a budget that could make or... Read more |
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Saadia Ahmad Democracy Is Not Demonization I am a Muslim-American and a peacebuilder. In the aftermath of a polarizing election season, the victory of President-elect Donald Trump, and an onslaught of violent hate crimes and proposed policies... Read more |
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Shamus Cooke Can a Mass Movement Seize This Anti-Trump Moment? Change is in the air. Millions of people in the U.S. woke up to the living nightmare of a Trump presidency. The threat and shock posed by Trump jolted hundreds of thousands off their couch and into... Read more |
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Ray McGovern Installing a Torture Fan at CIA President-elect Donald Trump’s selection of Kansas Congressman Mike Pompeo, an open aficionado of torture practices used in the “war on terror,” to be CIA director shows that Trump was serious when... Read more |
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Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II A Dying Mule Always Kicks the Hardest Why Donald Trump's election means "we must work together for a Third Reconstruction in America." Read more |
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The Yes Men The Yes Men's Guide to Resisting Trump What happened Nov. 8 is for many of us (especially liberal white people) literally unthinkable — which may be why our bodies are getting involved, with many reporting stomach problems and nausea, or... Read more |
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Bill McKibben Donald Trump is Betting Against all Odds on Climate Change President-elect Donald Trump has already begun to back off some of his promises: Maybe not all of Obamacare has to go. Maybe parts of his wall will actually be a fence. Maybe it’s okay to have some... Read more |
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Rohit Chandan TV Pundits Eager to Make Trump the New 'Normal' After wrongly predicting the election, political pundits are returning to TV talkshows to explain what will happen under a Trump presidency. But these predictions aren’t like TV anchors predicting... Read more |
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LeeAnn Hall This Doesn't Sound Like Our Voice We’re already starting to see how America’s gamble on Donald Trump will pay off: with gifts to the corporations and billionaires he swore he’d put us above. One of Trump’s first priorities is to... Read more |
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Mark Pocan An Unstoppable Progressive Movement There is no reason to sugar coat it. The election of Donald Trump is a wakeup call for those of us who care about working-class families. People all across the country are struggling to make ends... Read more |
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Conn Hallinan America’s Spiral Into Permanent War Seems More Foolish Than Ever Donald Trump is inheriting the scariest tools of aggression imaginable. A new book explores their dark legacy. Read more |
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Janine Jackson Spinning Bannon as ‘Provocateur’ Who ‘Relishes Combativeness’ There’s a difference between bad news and bad reporting. We’re seeing a lot of both these days, as each Trump Cabinet choice hurls us deeper into dystopia. For example: How do you describe a man who... Read more |
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Jeff Bryant What Student Protests Tell Us About America Under Trump While it may be President Obama’s job to ease the country through the change in leadership to a President Donald Trump administration, the rest of the country doesn’t have to go along with it. At... Read more |
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Michael Winship None of This Is Normal. All of It Is Un-American. Hate crimes after Donald Trump's election and his appointment of Steve Bannon to the White House aren't the way to bring America back together. Read more |
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Cornel West Goodbye, American Neoliberalism. A New Era Is Here Trump’s election was enabled by the policies that overlooked the plight of our most vulnerable citizens. We gird ourselves for a frightening future Read more |
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Dipti Bhatnagar, Sara Shaw Can Keeping It in the Ground Be Fair? The movement to ‘ keep it in the ground ’ is gaining pace. The climate science is becoming ever more apocalyptic about how little time we have to curb dangerous climate change - a recent UNEP report... Read more |
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Sonali Kolhatkar Bernie Sanders Continues His Political Revolution Among the many conflicting and shocked thoughts that went through my head on election night, as I watched the victory of Donald Trump materialize in defiance of predictions, was that once upon a time... Read more |
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Bhikkhu Bodhi Worldviews Clashing at Standing Rock The standoff at Standing Rock offers a choice between two worldviews: one that can lead to a new economy of shared prosperity and one that will hasten the devastation of the planet. Read more |
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Peter Dreier Trump Isn’t Hitler. But We Should Act Like He Is. Trumpism is a new phenomenon in our country’s history—our stance must be one of resistance and opposition Read more |
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Christopher D. Cook In the Dumps? Ten Ways to Fight Trump This will be the seed-bed for a progressive populist uprising, if we organize, coalesce, and make it so. Read more |
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Peter Bloom Progressives Wake Up: It’s Time to Put Centrism to Rest Argument for a new bold vision of progress Read more |
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Mattea Kramer On the Road With Our American Selves (Or How to Feel Like a Jerk in Mombasa) Read more |
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Chuck Collins, Helen Flannery Gilded Giving: What Happens When Billionaires Dominate the Charitable Sector New report details dangers of a top-heavy philanthropy in age of extreme inequality Read more |
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John Feffer Bartleby the American The case for non-cooperation with Trump. Read more |
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Ralph Nader Which Trump? Early Signs Not Good Optimists are hoping for a Trump makeover. They cling to his brief victory remarks suggesting that he wants to be the “president of all the people.” In his 60 Minutes interview following the election... Read more |