Ihlam Omar, Ayanna Pressley, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashid Tlaib – The New, Refreshing Faces in the House of Representatives. All young, Brown and Black, the hope of change…
_______________
We need to support Ilhan Omar…as well as Rashida Tlaib and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez…The Congressional Brown and Black-skinned holy trinity for peace, justice and accountability
_______________
1.
Three new members of the House of Representatives, all women of color, one whose family originates from Africa, the second from the Middle East, the third from Latin America.
- All representing important American cities – Minneapolis-St. Paul, Detroit, New York City.
- All supported by a base of working class, Brown and Black, progressive and Socialist elements.
- All young, poised and already showing a kind of toughness and principle that makes moderate Democrats cringe and Trump like Republicans poop in their pants.
- All under attack by the right-wing in the scurrilous manner they have become accustomed to – racist and death threats; and all in one way or another already!! more or less abandoned by the more moderate elements of the Democratic Party.
Support Miguel Angel, Arrested by ICE in Denver
Foot path to border customs San Diego-Tijuana, American side
Last I knew Miguel Angel, a Chicano activist in the Democratic Party, one of a number of young, brown-skinned, talented political organizers, was running for city council in Denver’s District 9; the next thing I know he is incarcerated in the ICE facility in Aurora, Colorado, a facility he has publicly criticized on a number of grounds, most recently because of a chicken pox outbreak there.
Coincidentally – or not – in the same few days that our Miguel Angel was kidnapped by what can only be considered the US version of the Gestapo, ICE, an immigrant rights “activist detained in Florida just weeks after he appeared in an acclaimed film at the Sundance Film Festival about activists infiltrating and exposing for-profit immigrant detention jails.” According to DemocracyNow! today (March 4, 2019) Claudio Rojas, an immigrant from Argentina was arrested on Wednesday, February 27, 2019 by ICE after a routine check-in at the Krome Detention Center in Miami, Flordia for an annual check-in and is now being held at Krome Detention Center, where he faces immediate deportation.
How many other immigrants’ rights activists have been targeted for deportation?
I don’t know Miguel Angel well, but among the young Chicanos that have become active and working in the Democratic Party here in Colorado, he’s already a stand out for his dedication, principle and from what I can tell, his political acumen. I last ran into him at the “Marade” – Denver’s Martin Luther King Jr annual celebration – one of the biggest in the country. I had heard – or maybe read on Facebook – that he was running for city council in Denver’s District 9 that covers parts of Five Points, Curtis Park and Whittier Neighborhoods, long working class, Black and Chicano neighborhoods currently, like the rest of Denver, ravaged by development and “gentrification.” (1) Read more…
Beecher Island – A Short Detour on the Genocide Train…
The Arikaree River Valley by Beecher Island
__________
For the most part, the military “engagements” between Native peoples and the US army, fought on such lopsided terms, ended badly for Native Americans. But at Beecher Island, under the leadership of Cheyenne warrior, Roman Nose, the tides were momentarily turned. If the U.S. army unit was able to survive at all, it was largely because they possessed repeating rifles, the precursors to machine guns.
__________
It sits in a valley between two rises in the landscape. In between the Arikaree River, there a small stream, flows east and north until it tumbles into the Republican River near Hagler, Nebraska. According to the Wikipedia description:
…it has been made one of the designated areas under the Colorado Natural Areas Program because it is “part of the largest and best remaining example of a naturally functioning Great Plains river system in Colorado.” It has several species of reptiles, fish, and amphibians that are native and uncommon. The area is a sanctuary for many bird species, including burrowing owls, ferruginous hawks, and greater prairie chickens. The habitat is near-pristine and there are high-quality riparian and native prairie plants
There in September, 1868, an US Army patrol of some fifty soldiers was surprised and ambushed by a party of some 1000 Indians, Cheyenne, Arapahoe and Ogallalah Sioux among them, the survivors of the Sand Creek Massacre four years previous. Although suffering many casualties, the army patrol held out on the island – a sand bar situated between branches of the Arikaree. It was later named Beecher Island after Lieutenant Frederick H. Beecher, one of the patrol leaders, killed in the skirmish. Read more…
Freud and the Democrats……….
The site of the shell of the Great Western Sugar Company refinery in Ovid Colorado (just south of Julesberg) in April, 2016
Sugar Beets and Colorado
Sugar beets are still grown in Colorado, but on nothing close to the scale that they once were. Foreign competition, the automation of the production process and other factors decades ago caused a decline in what once was one of the state’s most lucrative agricultural businesses – the growth and refining of sugar beets. According to my 2019 calendar and map put out by the trade publication “The Sugarbeet Grower“, sugar beets continue to be grown in the state’s northeast corner – as well as the adjoining areas of the Nebraska Panhandle and southeastern Wyoming.
Contemporary sugar beet production continues but not on the scale of the first half of the 20th century when for all practical purpose, sugar beet were at the heart of Colorado agriculture, with the profits coming from that industry in large measure helping fuel the state’s economic transformation and growth. As of the turn of the millennium, 2002, there were still more than 1000 sugar beet growers in this tri-state region. (1)
If the first major wave of European settlers came to Colorado in search of gold, silver and other metals for the state’s Rocky Mountains, starting sometime in the 1880s and early 1890s, a second wave came to take advantage of the state’s agricultural potential; it included investors with money from mining as well as East Coast and Chicago financiers, and a work force whose numbers have populated the state today – Volga Germans, Mexicans, Japanese labor. Read more…
Tues Evening on KGNU – “Iran’s Foreign Minister, Mohammed Javad Zarif Resigns. What’s The Deal?” – Tues, Feb. 26, 2019 @6 pm Mountain Time
John Kerry and Mohammad Javad Zarif named winners of the Chatham House Prize 2016 for the signing of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (Iran Nuclear Deal)
Hear Ibrahim Kazerooni and Rob Prince on KGNU Boulder (88.5 FM, 1390 AM, Streaming at http://www.kgnu.org) on Hemispheres, Middle East Dialogues hosted by Jim Nelson, Tues, February 26, 2019 @ 6-7 pm Mountain States Time
The program is available for streaming/downloading tomorrow at KGNU’s archives
Colorado State Veterans Home at Fitzsimons – Despite Positive Survey Results, More Problems.
Veteran Gerry Muehl
____________________
“They [the government] want us to volunteer and get drafted and go into combat situations where we get screwed up or get killed. We’re told “good job” – but that’s it. They don’t do a thing for us. They’re not going to help us out.
You have to fight the VA continuously to get anything; the politicians don’t want to do anything either.”
Gerry Muehl, Vietnam War Marine Veteran
_____________________
1.
Gerry Muehl has a home in a quiet single family neighborhood in Aurora, Colorado just west of Chambers Road, about a mile north of the interstate, I-70. An American flag flies outside of his door, his photo as a young marine hangs in his living room. He wore a Reagan-Bush t-shirt for our interview. When I asked him about the t-shirt he commented: “The only Republican that I know that ever did anything for us was Ronald Reagan. He gave us the biggest pay raise that the military ever saw. I think it was in his first term.” Gerry doesn’t think much of other recent American presidents, Democrat or Republican.
His current, long-term residence is the Colorado State Veterans’ Home at Fitzsimons on the Anschutz Medical Campus; it is a part of a system of Colorado state nursing homes for veterans run by Colorado’s Department of Human Services. The residents, staff and family members refer to the facility simply as “Fitz”. Given his many ailments, Gerry spends a fair amount of time going from one specialist to another in an attempt to manage his conditions. He only returns home to visit with his wife once a week on Saturday mornings. Over the past few months I visited and interviewed Gerry twice, most recently this past Saturday, February 9. Read more…
Quicksand by Henning Mankell
In January, 2014, Swedish political crime author Henning Mankell was informed he had cancer; he died in October, 2015. In that brief twenty-one month period from the time he was diagnosed to his death, Mankell continued to write. In “Quicksand: What It Means to be a Human Being” (Kvicksand in Swedish) (1) he wrote a series of 67 vignettes, part memoir, part a collection of essays on a variety of subjects, most between three and five pages long. Although he write a little about reacting to his deteriorating health, the book is not so much about dying. It delves into those aspects of life that he is drawn to, that he will miss and those which have meaning to him at this point in his life with the end near. Secular through and through, he has no illusions about what follows.
Quicksand is rich testimonial the author’s humanity.
While Mankell explores many subjects – growing up in Sweden’s north, an apprenticeship in Paris, a bit about his personal, loves, his parents, other relationships – I was more drawn to a number of recurring themes, both looking back and forward in time, placing himself somewhere in this continuum between what was and what will be. That resonates. I think along similar lines. Mankell places his own life – and that of his contemplates – with the broader context of human evolution, where it’s been, where it’s headed. Read more…
Russian scarves, exhibited at the Global Village Museum in Ft. Collins starting February 1, 2019 for several months
An exhibit of Russian cultural items, many of them exquisite handicraft items – along with a series of lectures – opened last night at the Global Village Museum, Colorado’s only international inter-cultural museum, in Ft. Collins. Nancy and I traveled up to Ft. Collins to be their opening night.
What a pleasant, educationally rich surprise.
Tastefully done the collection was gathered from the Russian Community living (mostly) in northern Colorado who donated what were obviously their finest pieces, mementos of the rich culture from which they immigrated, most of them since the collapse of the USSR in December, 1991.
The collection includes traditional holiday peasant clothing, pottery, a lovely series of “podstakanniks” – the metal Russian tea glass holders in which tea is served on Russian trains – tapestries and the like. All in all the collection is a wealth of precious personal items offered for public viewing informing the Colorado public that a Russian community in the state does exist.
There were also a few World War II mementos, several posters celebrating the end of the May 9th end of the war in Europe in which the Soviet Union played such a key role in defeating Nazism – and paid such painful price, the accepted figure of the Soviet casualties being somewhere around 27 million. At a time when U.S.-Russian relations are in a historic free-fall these days, in some ways even worse than U.S.-Soviet relations during the Cold War – it was a pleasure to see this kind of people-to-people tasteful cultural exchange to cut through all the increasingly shrill and bipartisan rhetoric. Read more…
A Palestinian woman tries to avoid walking in sewage water that flows from the nearby Israeli settlements into the West Bank village of Kafr Thulth, near Qalqilya, December 25, 2012. Local residents said that the sewage water comes from the Wadi Qana settlements, especially the Ma’ale Shomron settlement, and said that this has been an ongoing problem for four years. Despite some friends here not believing such insidious practices do not happen, they do happen and continue now seven years later.
______________________________________________________
What two Black intellectuals, Angela Davis and now Michelle Alexander, have done is both simple but profound: They have rejected the idea that criticizing Israel, even harshly, is antisemitism. Anti-Zionism is not antisemitism. They have defended and legitimized criticizing Israel. They have given their support and solidarity to the “BDS” (boycott, divestment, sanctions) movement against Israel as a legitimate anti-racist tactic to put pressure on Israel to end its oppressive practices against the Palestinian people. The two women compare Zionist practices with South African Apartheid.
______________________________________________________
1.
With very few exceptions – I know one or two – most humans live in a self-contained bubble, reinforced by those around us. It can be a bubble of class, race, religion, ethnicity or some combination thereof. Pretty much everyone has their very own bubble, that they can’t seem to see beyond. For Catholics – at least the Pope and the Cardinals anyway – it’s abortion; for Jews, especially but not uniquely in the US of A, it’s Zionism and has been since the end of World War II. There are so many “I’m progressive on everything but Palestine” people.
Lancing the boil is a precondition for healing a wound; before it is cleansed a fair amount of puss comes to the surface. That is what Michelle Alexander’s piece “Breaking the Silence on Palestine” (NY Times, January 19, 2019) accomplished. It is a kind of political pin prick that bursts the myth of progressive Israel. With its publication a new kind of “dialogue” – one far more frank – about Israel’s “relationship” with the Palestinians has begun.
As Alexander notes:
“… it seems the days when critiques of Zionism and the actions of the State of Israel can be written off as anti-Semitism are coming to an end. There seems to be increased understanding that criticism of the policies and practices of the Israeli government is not, in itself, anti-Semitic.“
Alexander is building on a discussion of the nature of Zionism and its Palestinian victims which has been going on for some time and has included more recently Alice Walker, Marc Lamont Hill and Angela Davis. All have a lifetime of fighting against racism in American and for the common good in general. This position build on more than half a century of peace and leftist movement criticism of Israel combined with sympathy for the plight of the Palestinian people. Read more…
Thinking About Zionism, AntiSemitism, Human Rights…Publicly (2)
(Yesterday at the “Marade” – Denver’s annual march to honor Martin Luther King II’s legacy, now in its 35th year – I took a picture of someone holding a sign “Fox News Lies; Folks Died.” That triggered a discussion with Nancy who was marching with me despite some pain in her hip. We both agreed that it was not only Fox News that lies, but also the NY Times… of course the latter does it far more eloquently and articulately – not quite lies, but what could be called “gray propaganda”.
It is a question of not lying outright but by emphasizing certain aspects of the news while de-emphasizing others. Occasionally, as was the case of Judith Miller and Michael Gordon in the build up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, actual falsification of the facts did take place, and on Page 1 of that esteemed paper.
The reporting of the NY Times on Israel, on its Occupation of Palestinian Territories, has been, over the past 74 years since the end of World War II, in a word, dismal. Israel could hope for no greater apologist, ….Mondoweiss had a fine analysis of the Times’ sorry history on the subject.
And then three days ago, in an apparent change of direction, the Times published an op-ed by Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow, recently hired as an editorial writer; it is entitled “Breaking The Silence On Palestine.” This comes after a string of “incidents” nationally in which Israel’s more zealous supporters in this country attacked, undermined or discredited critics of Israeli repression against the Palestinians; more on what I think is going on later. Along with the defense of Angela Davis by the city of Birmingham, Alabama, this article could be a watershed event in US journalism and a shift in the Times shameless covering – or lack thereof of the Israeli Occupation. It is well argued, building on the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr.; Nothing as clear cut, as humane, has EVER appeared in the pages of the NY Times, nor given such attention, at least not to my knowledge.)
Three cheers for Michelle Alexander.
We all need to show her the kind of solidarity that her courage and principle demand.
More attention will be given to Alexander’s article in further blog entries.
Syrian government troops liberating Aleppo from ISIS, al Nusra. December 23, 2013. Idlib Province is next…
Hear Ibrahim Kazerooni and Rob Prince on KGNU Boulder (88.5 FM, 1390 Am, Streaming at http://www.kgnu.org) on Hemispheres, Middle East Dialogues hosted by Jim Nelson, Tues, January 22, 2019 @ 6-7 pm Mountain States Time
The program is available for streaming/downloading tomorrow at KGNU’s achives
(
Yassin Adel Za Aqeeq, age 15. Kidnapped from his home in Beit Ummar, Occupied Palestine, by the Israeli Defense Force in December, 2018. Hundreds of Palestinian youth are in Israeli jails, a full one third of them, from the town of Beit Ummar.
Note: What follows below is a slightly [language tightened up] revised and expanded entry on comments made on Facebook recently.
It concerns what has become the pervasive and underhanded way that Israel’s more zealous organizational supporters work to discredit and intimidate those who publicly criticize Israeli actions and/or support the Palestinian people in the struggle to end the Occupation.
Such methods have existed for decades, but have intensified as the public mood in the United States has shifted away from blind support of Israel and the myth of a halcyon, progressive Israel continues to erode.
To that end, recently Black scholar, human rights organizer, and long-time open American Communist, Angela Davis found herself in the middle of media storm. Again. One could hear a certain weariness in her voice but also a determination to address this new attack on her person head on, with the dignity and careful thought that has marked her life. A human rights award, the Fred Shuttlesworth Human Rights Award, offered to her for a lifetime of human rights work, was rescinded after pressure was exerted on the board of the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, in Birmingham, Alabama.
Later it was acknowledged publicly – by the mayor of Birmingham, Alabama – that the pressure came from the Birmingham Jewish Federation and the city’s Holocaust Remembrance center. Shortly thereafter, and in response, what amounts to the city of Birmingham, its city council included, issued a counter statement of appreciation of Angela Davis’ work and invited her to “an alternative awards event” to be held on February 16, in Birmingham. I have been informed that there will be two events on that day, a meeting with human rights organizers in the morning and a dinner in the evening, both, as I understand it, open to the public. Read more…
In Solidarity With Angela – 5 – Dr. Haider Khan, University of Denver, Korbel School of International Studies
Fania and Angela Davis…sisters in struggle and in life
Haider Khan teaches Global Political Economy at the University of Denver’s Korbel School of International Studies (from where I retired three years ago). He comes from Bangladesh and was there during that country’s of independence from Pakistan in 1971-2 in which as many as 3,000,000 people died, a terrible price for freedom. He is an internationally renowned political economist who has worked for the Asian Development Bank and spends a good part of the year lecturing the world over.
Here is a letter of solidarity that he wrote directly to Angela Davis along with a link to an article he wrote “On Capitalism and Racism”
Dear Prof. Davis,
I am writing to declare my firm solidarity with your positions regarding BDS and more broadly your life long struggles for justice and human rights for all.
Several years ago I was in the audience when you spoke at Rome. I was one of those who raised their hands in response to your question about who supported your case for release from prison during the 1960s struggles. I was only a junior high school student then but came from a family of anti-racist and anti-imperialist activists which made it natural for us to support you and your struggles which were and are also our collective struggles for freedom and justice for all.
Later I met Prof. Vincent Harding at our Iliff School of Theology and became friends with him. I am sure Vince would have spoken out for your cause had he been alive and with us today.
Please let me know how best we can support your cause.
Warmly,
Haider
PS: The following article I wrote two years ago may be of some interest:
Fania and Angela Davis…sisters in struggle and in life
(Note: Although I will not deal with it in this entry, this whole incident brings to light the long sometimes cooperative, in recent decades more contentious relationship between this country’s Jewish and Black Communities, the key element of which is how and on what basis can the two communities re-establish a working relationship based on mutual respect and cooperation that characterized their relations up until the 1970s. Mike Wilzoch in his letter touches on this history. Today America’s Blacks and Jews – among others – need to find each other again but on a new, more democratic (and in the case of the mainstream Jewish Community less patronizing) manner. With the time she has left, it is Angela Davis and others like her – Black Marxists to be precise – who brings to the struggle against racism – that great blotch on American history – a class analysis as well; key to the healing process, Tikkun – as Larry Grimm noted. )
Suggest that blog readers take a look at the article on the on-line source from “Mondoweiss” “Birmingham Institute’s recission of Angela Davis award over BDS becomes an embarrassment to pro-Israel groups that applied pressure” by Philip Weiss. “Recission” – great word. It is thorough and well done.
Besides dealing with the issue at hand, it exposes in many ways how these Federations like the Birmingham Jewish Federation operate all over the country.
It speaks of “over reach of the Israel lobby”.
It also documents, carefully and I might add, tastefully, what went on behind the scenes which many thought was happening concerning “the pressure” exerted by the Birmingham Jewish Federation – the threat was pressure from the Federation, and apparently other Jewish organizations to withdraw funding and donations to Birmingham Civil Rights Institute in which Jewish donors are significant.
Faced with this threat and all the hysterical nonsense about BDS being anti-Semitic because it calls for boycotts, divestments and sanctions against companies supporting and financially benefiting from the Occupation – the Civil Rights Institute’s leadership caved under the pressure.
And then all hell broke loose locally, in Alabama, nationally and internationally. I still think that the Birmingham Jewish Federation and the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute don’t understand what hit them quite yet.
For those of you who interested in following the never-ending political struggles over conflicting narratives on the Palestinian-Israeli divide – you could do a lot worse than following Mondoweiss. Pretty much everything I have read by them is like this article, ie. it has a point of view but the tone is controlled, informative, politically sound; the articles have a cutting edge – if not – why read them? but they are about as good “committed political journalism” as is found anywhere. From where I am sitting it represents the best in a tradition of progressive Jewish writing on the subject.
Phil Weiss has a clear and steady understanding of the processes and the political wrangling unfolding. The website provides a genuine service in interpreting and explaining events like this.
More – There are federations like the Birmingham Jewish Federation all over the country, including here in Colorado. Such Federations bring together diverse numbers of Jewish organizations, religious, social work, human rights, whatever into a coordinated whole. They are essentially coalitions of different Jewish organizations. While they claim in principle to be democratic, in essence – no surprise here – they are run in a centralized, ruthless manner, especially where it concerns support for Israel, and not just Israel but the Netanyahu political perspective. That is the case here in Colorado where local power brokers essentially dictate policy behind the scenes. This has caused no end of turmoil.
So beyond the issue of pressuring the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute to cancel Angela Davis’ award there is another one – probably many others actually – at play: struggles for democracy within the Federations themselves. These struggles are not just about Israel but about all kinds of issues facing the nation and the world and for more democratic decision making within the community that takes into consideration the diversity of view. What might be referred to as the Jewish rank and file in these organizations – which is liberal to left on most domestic issues, anti-racist and on the Israeli-Palestinian issue is moderate to left – is increasingly frustrated across the county with how things are run and ramrodded through the decision making processes.
The underhanded back-room way the pressure was exerted on the Civil Rights Institute is also typical, most of the pressure is exerted informally, behind the scenes. It has been going on for decades. A call to a church that might be thinking of sponsoring an event where a Palestinian voice will be heard; a visit by prominent local Jewish rabbis and business leaders to a Israeli critic’s employer, requesting, or suggesting that the person be fired, a threat to break from inter-religious organizations if the question of Israel is raised…and of course the completely scripted free trips to Israel funded by AIPAC or like organizations. Rarely do the Federations get caught “in the act”, so to speak, as in this Birmingham case – but in this asymmetrical political warfare – watch and see how it resonates nationwide. You can bet that the Federations nationally will discuss how to manage the criticism, some kind of temporary tactical retreat I would guess, maybe even a mea culpa before they go back to business as usual, which they will do…but in new uncharted waters because a veil has been lifted.
Frankly the way that the Birmingham Jewish Federation is operating is nothing new; what is new is that they caught with their pants down so the speak for the city of Birmingham, the nation and the whole world to see. Their modus operandi is for the world to see and for the first time in a long time, they’ve had their wings clipped. What lessons will the Federations nationwide draw from this experience? I doubt there will be any from the Federation’s leadership and the power brokers behind the scenes. But from the base of the Jewish Community, the voice of which has long been censored or silenced, I expect a different, more vibrant honest and progressive response.
Let me be clear, it is not just mainstream Jewish organizations like the Birmingham Jewish Federation that needs to be either renewed or swept away but so many other institutions in our country that have grown stale and out of touch with the realities and constituencies they supposedly represent. The labor movement, other religious denomination institutions – the Catholic Church comes to mind – many old guard civil rights organizations – old left formations be they communist, socialist or whatever, the Democratic Party…one can make similar criticisms of all of them – out of touch to the point of being irrelevant, with a bureaucracy clinging to what’s left of their power and influence. If the Birmingham Jewish Federation’ backroom shenanigans have come to light – and they have – know that they part and parcel of a whole world of institutions that need to go back to basics, renew their their original commitments, let the new young dynamic blood in…and for old folks to step aside. If reform is not possible, and frankly I serious question whether it is in these Jewish Federations, they should be replaced by institutions more in tune with the times and their constituency.
I will elaborate upon the history in later entries.
View from the Left Bank: Rob Prince's Blog 