A Marxist Writing and Making History

Remember Solidarity! Join a No Kings Protest! Vote!

Martin Halpern — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 21:31:35 GMT

As we deal with the traumas of war, dehumanizing division, and hatred, it will help our nervous systems to remember solidarity. More importantly, solidarity is the only way forward to a better life for our diverse nations and the planet we share with other living beings.

With whom should we be in solidarity? On the one hand, those of us who believe in the essential goodness of human beings, wish to be in solidarity with everyone. I’m reminded of Bertolt Brecht’s Solidarity Song:

Black or white or brown or yellow
Leave your old disputes behind.

. . . .

All the gang of those who rule us
Hope our quarrels never stop
Helping them to split and fool us
So they can remain on top.

Forward, without forgetting
Where our strength can be seen now to be!
When starving or when eating
Forward, not forgetting
Our solidarity!

Democratic Renewal and Solidarity with the Oppressed

As part of his effort to rule as a king-like figure, Donald Trump attacks immigrants, people of color, women, and anyone who challenges him.

What does solidarity with women mean today? It means rejecting the misogyny that leads to the prevalence of rape at Cornell University and other college campuses. It means holding accountable not only the rapists but those who excused or covered up the crimes. It means passing legislation to guarantee a right to abortion throughout the country. It means guaranteeing jobs, child care, family leave, and free education so that families can thrive.

What does solidarity with indigenous, African American, and Hispanic communities subjected to land theft, enslavement, and colonialism mean today? In the wake of the assault on democracy and the U.S. constitution, there are many calls today for both a new constitution and fundamental constitutional reform. Reparation, land reform, and greater power to oppressed communities should be an important part of the picture of the radical change we need.

Growing Up with the Idea of Solidarity

As a child, I learned about solidarity from my parents. My parents met in the trade union movement. Identifying as labor unionists and working class was part of my identity growing up. My parents provided a model of caring about others and respect for working people. Listening to Paul Robeson, Pete Seeger, Peter, Paul and Mary, and Judy Collins was about both joy and solidarity.

When I asked the Four Questions at Passover, my dad’s response was not only about Jewish people’s resistance to fascism during the 1930s and World War II but also about the need for solidarity with the movement for civil rights for African Americans.

Solidarity with the Oppressed and Victims of Aggression

As a college student, I organized a march in solidarity with the Selma to Montgomery marchers, worked as a civil rights worker in Tennessee, and joined others in demonstrations for peace in Vietnam. I worked on the campaign to free Angela Davis, marched to free Ben Chavis and the Wilmington 10 in Raleigh, North Carolina, and organized a contingent for the Twentieth Anniversary March on Washington.

My lifelong participation in peace and justice movements continues today with working to end the genocide against the Palestinian people and the wars in Ukraine and Iran and supporting the Black Lives Movement.

In the last few years, mass movements for immigrant rights and Black Lives Matter and against the genocide in Palestine and ICE terrorism have grown. However, the domination of both major political parties by the wealthy, the MAGA movement’s promotion of hate, and the corporate mass media’s pseudo-neutrality has made it more difficult for us to talk across political and cultural divides. President Trump’s authoritarianism and the Supreme Court’s undermining of abortion rights and voting rights and its support for immunizing Donald Trump from accountability for his crimes has led to a constitutional and democratic crisis. The need for solidarity is greater today than ever.

Solidarity with Labor

The most important progressive force in our country has long been working people and their organizations. Trump has targeted the federal work force, issuing executive orders taking away union rights from workers in many agencies. He’s hobbled the National Labor Relations Board and reduced the minimum wage for employees of federal contractors. The AFL-CIO is suing Trump over illegal and burdensome reporting requirements. To support workers worldwide, the AFL-CIO created the non-profit Solidarity Center.

There are growing calls for a general strike to defend our democracy.

The Role of Musicians, Film Makers, Artists, and Athletes

Musicians, writers, actors, and athletes have taken the lead in speaking out in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter Movement, with Palestinian people, and in support of democratic rights. All of us should learn from their work and their example and support their right to participate in our political life.

Several hundred musicians and some independent record labels formed a No Music for Genocide campaign last year. Musicians who have been outspoken include Renée Rapp, Billie Eilish, The Weeknd, Elyanna, Eric Clapton, and Kehlani. Earlier this month, Bruce Springsteen headlined a Power to the People Festival that pledged support for voting rights organizations.

More than 8.000 workers in the film industry have joined together to form Filmworkers for Palestine. Among those speaking out are Mark Ruffalo, Pedro Pascal and Avi Duverney. In her newest film, 14, Duverny highlights the struggle for African American voting rights. Last month, actors Susan Sarandon and Hannah Einbinder were among those arrested at a Jewish Voices for Peace demonstration against Benjamin Netanyahu at the United Nations.

Outstanding in his leadership in the struggle to support the Black Lives Matter movement is former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colian Kapernick. In 2016, Kapernick took a knee during the singing of the national anthem in solidarity with Black youth being murdered by police. He just published a memoir, The Perilous Fight (Hachette Book Group, 2026). In an episode of Trevor Noah’s podcast entitled “Colin Kapernick: The NFL Tried to Buy My Silence,” Kapernick discussed his experience growing up as a Black child adopted by a white family in a predominately white community, his football career, his activism and consequent blacklisting by the National Football League. Some athletes followed Kapernick’s example and he initiated a #TakeAKnee campaign. In addition to inspiring o

There was a significant backlash against Kapernick’s action. Donald Trump made vicious and vulgar attacks. Kapernick’s suit against the NFL was settled out of court. Kapernick continues to work out and remains in playing shape, but he has yet to return to the field.

In addition to inspiring other athletes, Kapernick and his wife Nessa Diab founded the non-profit Know Your Rights Camp. The camp’s “mission is to advance the liberation and well-being of Black and Brown communities through education, self-empowerment, mass-mobilization and the creation of new systems that elevate the next generation of change leaders.”

Conclusion

It is time for all of us to act. We should act in solidarity with Kapernick and others targeted for their activism. We need to reach out and talk to those with different views as well as get on the streets in mass demonstrations such as the October 17, 2026, No Kings March. The stakes are too high for us to stand on the sidelines, and hope things will get better without us.

How Can We Save Our Fragile Democracy?

Martin Halpern — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 18:54:30 GMT

Introduction

Democracy in our country has been tentative, uncertain, and incomplete. Those with few or no rights sought to promote their interests and claim rights but often had few allies. From the very beginning and throughout our history, democracy has been fragile. Inclusion of working people, women, people of color and immigrants has been dependent on the mass mobilization of the excluded and their success in finding allies. The fragility of our democracy is particularly evident today. Those with economic power have sought with a fair degree of success to prevent others from having a say in our polity. While the power of the wealthy has meant that democracy has always been limited, there have been advances as well as setbacks.

The failed wars of the last quarter century, the chasm between the wealthy few and the rest of the population, the destruction of unions and of social benefits have led to a crisis. The current assaults on anti-imperialist activists, Black voting rights, immigrant rights, and women’s reproductive rights are features of a fundamental threat to what’s left of our democracy. Moreover, the U.S. Supreme Court has empowered Trump’s effort to remake the U.S. in his image and to eliminate anyone who disagrees with him. Can our fragile democracy survive?

In this 250th year since the signing of the Declaration of Independence, it’s helpful to have a clear-eyed perspective on our history.

From the Colonial Period through Reconstruction

Before 1776, the founding of colonies by European states in the Americas contradicted the idea of equality for all as settlements were based on dispossession of indigenous peoples and warfare against them and on the exploitation as slaves of people imported from Africa and indigenous people.

During the American Revolution, colonists rebelling against the British espoused ideas about the universality of rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. They established a republic, a representative government. Who was included in the vision of American revolutionary leaders? John Adams criticized Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, which developed broad support for independence among artisans, for being “too democratical.” Although the poor, women, and African Americans participated in the revolution, the propertied leaders failed to see them as equals in the new society they were creating. The artisans who were Paine’s principal audience organized in the Sons of Liberty and in their trades and gained a degree of recognition but their were few gains for other subordinate groups.

Jefferson’s initial draft of the Declaration of Independence included a passage condemning the British monarchy for introducing slavery — and also for encouraging those held in bondage from joining in the suppression of the Americans seeking independence.¹ Continental Congress delegates deleted the antislavery comments from the final draft of the Declaration while a passage chastising the British king for inciting “domestic insurrection” (i.e. slave rebellion) was included in the section condemning the king for provoking indigenous people (called “Savages”) to attack the rebelling Americans.

Many years later, Jefferson explained that the anti-slavery deletion stemmed from pressure from delegates from Georgia and the Carolinas and also from northerners. Some northerners were involved in the slave trade and slavery existed in most of the northern colonies. However, a significant movement for the abolition of slavery developed during the revolution. Some African Americans fought for American independence but more fought with the British because the latter promised freedom for those joining them.

Northern states began the gradual abolition of slavery during the revolution. Slavery “was basically dead in New England by 1800 and it became a moribund anachronism in the rest of the North no later than1820,” historian Sean Wilentz comments.² African Americans played an important part in the gradual abolitionist movement. They were the principal base of a radical movement for immediate abolition that began in the 1830s and also sought equal rights for African Americans. A movement for equal rights for women began in the same era.

The continuation of slavery in the South, the effort to extend slavery to the West, and plans to push slavery into the North and into territories beyond U.S. borders led to the Civil War. The ideas of the radical abolitionist movement gained increased influence in the Civil War struggle. The result was the abolition of slavery, the ratification of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, and the enactment of laws such as the Reconstruction Act of 1867 and the Ku Klux Klan acts that constituted advances toward racial equality.

From the Late Nineteenth Century to the Onset of the Great Depression

During the late nineteenth century, there were some modest gains for labor and women’s suffrage in some areas but the steps toward racial equality were largely reversed with the development of Jim Crow segregation in the South and its ratification by the Supreme Court in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) and other decisions. During the progressive era, there were further gains for the women’s suffrage movement and for labor unions, but few advances in black rights. It was a period that included violent riots against Chinese people, the passage of anti-Chinese legislation, and a new round of theft of indigenous people’s lands.

Government and business interests sometimes welcomed white male immigrants as needed laborers and settlers and sometimes turned hostile to them. As early as 1704 some white male immigrants gained the right to vote even though not citizens. Anti-immigrant movements arose such as the American Party in the 1840s that sought to prevent immigrant voting and delay naturalization for years. Immigrant voting declined because of the nativist pressure, rose again in the late nineteenth century, and finally came to an end in 1926 following the wave of nationalism during the progressive era and World War I.³ Congress enacted discriminatory restrictions on immigration from southern and eastern Europe in 1924 and the complete exclusion of people from Asia. It was the heyday of scientific racism.

U.S. attempts to directly or indirectly dominate other countries in Latin America, Hawaii, and the Philippines led to increased racism at home. Both anti-imperialist and peace movements developed, but their impact was limited.

During World War I, unions and the women’s suffrage movement made gains, but repression of anti-war opponents,immigrants, and radical labor and women’s suffrage activists included both mob attacks and the jailing of many. The Supreme Court rejected First Amendment-based challenges to convictions under the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918. Conservative forces defeated a post-World War I strike wave and inaugurated a Red Scare that included the jailing and deportation of members of two new communist parties. There were anti-black race riots throughout the country during and especially after World War I. In September 1919 in Elaine, Arkansas, local authorities and planter-led white mobs murdered over one hundred African Americans to put down a union drive by sharecroppers.⁴

The U.S in the 1920s was dominated by corporations and their political allies, especially in the Republican Party. A new Ku Klux Klan, founded in 1915, became a major factor in much of the country, targeting Catholics, Jews, African Americans, labor unionists, and Communists. Henry Ford sponsored the publication and distribution of an anti-Semitic tract, which the Nazis embraced. As in our day, the targeted groups fought back and won some victories. The climate of hate, however, overshadowed the occasional victories for reform, the persistence of a progressive trend, and the modest growth of a Communist movement in working class communities and industries such as mining, steel, auto, electrical, clothing and textile manufacturing and on the docks.

From the Great Depression to the Eve of the Reagan Presidency

The collapse of the economy in the Great Depression was more severe than any previous depression. By 1933, one quarter of the work force was unemployed while another 20 percent was employed only part time. Communist, Socialist, and other radicals organized movements among the unemployed and among those still working. Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal was both a response to those grass roots movements and accelerated them. Working people made economic and political gains in many places. Victories included unionization of mining, steel, auto, electrical, maritime, clothing, longshore, and maritime industries, the passage of the National Labor Relations Act, the Social Security Act, and the creation of millions of jobs under the Works Projects Administration.

The New Deal also saw advances in the inclusion of African Americans and women in government programs and in leadership positions in unions and government. Gains for African Americans and women under the Roosevelt Administration were even greater during World War II.

Advances in civil liberties during the New Deal were significant, too, as the courts responded to mass protest movements, the liberal Roosevelt Administration, and voters’ support for the Roosevelt New Deal and radical third parties in some states.

Even before Roosevelt came into office, the U.S. Supreme Court moved away from upholding repressive laws with the 1931 decision in Stromberg v. California, overturning the conviction of Yetta Stromberg for flying a red flag at a Communist youth gathering.

In DeJonge v. Oregon (1937), the court overturned the conviction of four Communists under a state sedition law. DeJonge and three others spoke at a meeting decrying police attacks on longshore strikers and Communist meeting places. The Court held the Criminal Syndicalism Law of Oregon invalid and ruled “The rights of free speech and peaceable assembly are fundamental rights which are safeguarded against state interference by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.” In the DeJonge case, the American Civil Liberties Union in Los Angeles worked with the Communist-led International Labor Defense.

A few months after the 8-0 DeJonge decision, the court ruled in favor of Communist activist Angelo Herndon’s right to organize in Atlanta, Georgia by a 5-4 margin in Herndon v. Lowry. Herndon had been convicted under a Georgia statute that was a revised version of a pre-Civil War law against slave insurrection. In a recent book, Brad Snyder details the mass protests for Herndon’s freedom and the many attorneys of varied political views who worked on his behalf.⁵ In Hague v. Committee for Industrial Organization (1939), the court ruled unconstitutional a Jersey City ordinance denying access to a public place for meetings sponsored by the CIO. In Thornhill v. Alabama (1940), the court ruled against a state law restricting peaceful picketing.

The New Deal period included setbacks as well as advances. The Memorial Day Massacre of steel unionists in Chicago in 1937 is one example. Another incident was the 1939 mass riot in San Antonio that prevented the Communist Party (CP) from holding a meeting in the city’s Municipal Auditorium despite the fact that the CP had a permit, the support of the city’s mayor, and the protection of city police and fire fighters.⁶

The internment of over 120,000 Japanese Americans on the West Coast was the most significant violation of civil liberties during World War II. Roosevelt’s executive order on internment was endorsed by the Supreme Court in Korematsu v. the United States (1944). There were also vigilante attacks on Japanese Americans as well as numerous assaults of Jehovah’s Witnesses because of their opposition to all war and their refusal to salute the U.S. flag.⁷

Steps affirming civil liberties also took place during World War II. In Schneiderman v. United States (1943), the Supreme Court in a 7-2 decision rejected the Roosevelt Administration’s effort to strip California Communist leader William Schneiderman of the citizenship he obtained in 1927 on the grounds he was not attached to the U.S. Constitution at that time. The Jehovah’s Witnesses also won a victory against being forced to salute the flag in West Virginia State Board of Education vs. Barnette (1943), overturning a 1940 decision.

Although attempts by New Dealers to advance anti-lynching legislation in the 1930s failed, new civil rights steps took place during World War II such as the creation of the federal Fair Employment Practices Committee and the racial integration of the nursing corps in the U.S. armed forces. Indeed, World War II laid the foundation for the modern civil rights movement.

Litigation leading to positive Supreme Court decisions such as Brown v. Board of Education (1954) contributed to civil rights advances. The organizing campaigns of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the NAACP, the Congress of Racial Equality, the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, and other groups confronted racism in the South and in the North and sought radical legislative change. The passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 were landmark achievements. Also important was the passage of state civil rights laws, the desegregation of baseball and of the armed forces and the winning of collective bargaining rights for public workers in half the states.

Victories for women’s rights included the non-discrimination in employment provision of the Civil Rights Act, Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, and the Roe v. Wade (1973) Supreme Court decision for reproductive freedom. The court’s one-person one- vote decision in Baker v. Carr (1962) was an important gain for equal representation in state legislatures.

The advances of the 1933-1978 period were slowed and significantly weakened by the cold war red scare and the passage of the anti-labor Taft-Hartley Act. The blacklisting of Communists in Hollywood and many other industries, the imprisonment of Communist leaders, and the ousting of Communist-led unions from the Congress of Industrial Organization weakened progressivism in labor unions and public life. The Truman Administration used the Smith Act, passed during the 1939-1941 mini-red scare, to prosecute CP leaders and the Supreme Court affirmed the convictions in Dennis v. U.S (1951).

The red scare began to subside following the armistice in the Korean War in 1953 and the U.S. Senate condemnation of Joseph McCarthy in 1954. In 1957, the Supreme Court in Yates v. U.S. freed California Communist leaders indicted under the Smith Act, ending prosecution of Communists under that law. Nevertheless, the court supported the Subversive Activities Control Board requirement that the CP register in 1961 and only ruled against that requirement in 1965.

Activists still had to contend with the investigations of the House Un-American Activities Committee. Begun as a special committee in 1938 focused in part on Nazi activities in the U.S., it became a permanent committee in 1945. Its attacks on left-wing unions and New Dealers in the 1930s led to widespread opposition, which continued into the postwar period. The House changed the committee’s name in 1969 to the House Internal Security Committee and abolished it in 1975.

Although the Communist Party survived, most left-led organizations did not. Only two left-led unions, the United Electrical Workers and the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, survived. Among the organizations unable to withstand the repression were the International Workers Order, a workers’ cooperative, the Civil Rights Congress, the National Negro Labor Council, and the Jefferson School of Social Sciences, among others. As the civil rights movement grew, new left-wing organizations emerged, some of which had significant Communist participation, including Freedomways magazine and the W.E.B. DuBois Clubs.

Undermining Democratic Gains — 1978 to the Present

The forty-five year period of sometimes modest and sometimes substantial gains for labor, women’s rights, civil rights, and civil liberties came to an end in 1978 with President Jimmy Carter preparing to face Republican Ronald Reagan. While the 1933-1978 period had its share of reactionary developments such as the cold war, the Korean and Vietnam wars, the Taft-Hartley Act, and the domestic red scare, the overall direction was one of democratic gains. Although there have been numerous and sometimes successful grass roots movements since 1978, conservatives have been largely ascendant during the past forty-eight years. The result has been U.S. democracy has become so fragile that many view it as moribund.

The conservative tide began with an anti-union offensive in the 1970s. Following the defeat of a modest Labor Law Reform Bill in 1978, Douglas Fraser, President of the United Auto Workers and a close ally of President Jimmy Carter, said that “leaders of the business community” were waging a “one-sided class war . . . against working people, the unemployed, the poor, minorities, the very young and the very old, and even many in the middle class of our society.”⁸ About the time of the defeat of the labor law reform bill came Carter’s decision to withdraw the bill for national health insurance on which he had campaigned. He also shifted spending from social programs to the military, suspended détente with the Soviet Union, and accepted Henry Kissinger’s advice to allow the Shah of Iran into the United States for cancer treatment during the upheaval of the Iran revolution. The ground was thus prepared for the most conservative business-oriented presidency since Calvin Coolidge.

Reagan’s firing of the striking air traffic controllers in 1981 increased the use of the striker replacement tactic and accelerated the business offensive against unions already underway. Reagan had opposed the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act and was hostile to affirmative action, claiming it amounted to reverse discrimination. The Supreme Court’s decision in Grove City v. Bell (1984) had undermined enforcement of civil rights. The Congress passed the Civil Rights Protection Act of 1988 by an overwhelming margin — and then overturned Reagan’s veto.

Reagan’s tax cuts for the rich and a further shift from social to military spending undermined the federal government’s attentiveness to the needs of working people. Union members were 23.3 percent of the work force in 1980 and fell to 17.0 percent in 1988.⁹

A key factor in the strength of anti-democratic conservatism throughout the cold war era and in subsequent decades as well has been the power of the military-industrial-intelligence complex. Despite the ending of the cold war during the Reagan-Bush era, interventions aimed at undermining the left and securing U.S. hegemony have continued.

The U.S. intervened in Greece in 1947, in Iran in 1953, in Guatemala in 1954, in Vietnam from 1954-1975, in Indonesia in 1958 and after, in Cuba in the 1960s and after, in the Dominican Republic in 1965, in Afghanistan in 1979 and after, in Lebanon in 1982, in Grenada in 1983, in Nicaragua and El Salvador in the 1980s and after, in the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq War mostly on the side of Iraq, in Panama in 1989, in Yugoslavia in 1998.

Although the Democrats managed to regain the White House with Bill Clinton in the 1992 election, Clinton consolidated rather than reversed the shift toward conservative economic, and social policies. Particularly important was Clinton’s support of the enactment of the Welfare Reform Bill, a signature measure in the Republicans’ Contract with America. Clinton’s appointees were far more liberal than were those of Reagan and Bush, but his two fine Supreme Court appointees, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer were not enough to shift the court from its conservative bent. Moreover, unions’ efforts to pass a new labor reform measure, the Workplace Fairness Bill, once again fell short and union density continued its decline, dropping to 13.4 percent in 2000.

Following the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the U.S. launched a war against Afghanistan and then a war against Iraq, beginning a series of forever wars. Attention to domestic needs declined as most resources went to the military. The authorities continued to rely on anti-communist tropes to weaken opposition to mostly unpopular wars. They also used anti-Islamic and anti-Arab propaganda. With the mainstream media on board, the free exchange of ideas about foreign policy largely disappeared.

A conservative Supreme Court majority intervened in the 2000 election to hand victory to Republican George W. Bush. The court had been trending conservative since the mid-1970s and moved to the far right after the death of Justice Ginsburg and the appointment of Amy Coney Barrett in 2020, Trump’s third appointment. This ultra-conservative Supreme Court majority has undermined the national right to abortion, gutted affirmative action for minorities and women, and eliminated almost all forms of protection for minority voting rights. It has given near total immunity to Trump. The millions who join the vast No Kings demonstrations are right to think that fundamental democratic rights are threatened by an authoritarian federal administration.

Presidents Obama and Biden pursued somewhat liberal policies and appointed decent and competent people to leadership positions. Their pro-corporate orientation, however, prevented them from pursuing the kinds of reforms that would both expand the number of their supporters and undermine the pseudo-populist Trump’s far right appeals to hatred of immigrants, Islam, foreigners, transgender individuals, minorities, women, socialists and Communists.

The growing support for the Affordable Care Act (ACA) shows the potential of reform initiatives that meet the needs of large numbers of people. Although the ACA is far from a universal program, it has assisted forty five million Americans with its combination of the expansion of Medicaid and support for enrollees’ premium costs in ACA health insurance plans. Strident right-wing opposition to the modest program initially limited its support to 42 percent. Support rose to 66 percent by November 2025.¹⁰ With the expiration of enhanced assistance for enrollees’ premium costs due to Republican control of Congress, the number of people covered by ACA plans has dropped by three million in 2026.¹¹ Imagine the political impact of the adoption of Medicare for All on the health care experience of tens of millions.

What Remains of Our Fragile Democracy?

An autocratic, fascist-minded U.S. president and an authoritarian-supporting Supreme Court have destroyed or undermined many of the democratic features of the U.S. political system. What remains?

Elections still exist. Trump and Republicans have struck blows against the right to vote, have succeeded in some racist gerrymandering, and continue to push for the passage of the SAVE Act, which would deprive millions of people of the right to vote with its identification requirements. Trump’s firing of Democratic members of a bipartisan Election Assistance Commission is of a piece with his effort to gain control of the upcoming midterm election.¹²
The Congress still exists. The Republican leadership in the Congress has failed to opposes the undermining of the Congress’ institutional authority by Trump and the Supreme Court.T rump refused to sign the bipartisan 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act in an attempt to pressure the Senate into passing the SAVE Act. However, the housing act became law without his signature. Trump failed to veto the law because he guessed that the Congress would override the veto. Like all bullies, Trump does not want to look weak. Even this obsequious Congress is starting to challenge Trump in small ways. More resistance will come under new leadership.
Mass demonstrations involving millions have taken place. We see the many mobilizations by Black Lives Matter, resistance to ICE, protests against the Gaza genocide, weekly standouts for peace, unions strikes and union solidarity actions, flotillas in support of the Palestinian people, and acts of solidarity with Cuba. Violence and illegal arrests and even deportations of protesters have taken place, but activists persist in their campaigns for peace and justice.
While union density has declined to 10 percent of the work force, the union movement remains the most important bulwark again corporate dominance of U.S. society. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that there were 14.7 million union members in 2025 and an additional 1.8 million non-members represented by unions. Seventy percent of the public support unions and estimates are that 48 to 70 percent of non-union wage and salary workers would join a union if they could.¹⁴
Although the mass media are dominated by corporate owners and those who suck up to them, there are numerous alternative voices. Here are a few: CounterPunch, Mondoweiss, The Chris Hedges Report, The Beinart Notebook, CodePink Substack, Consortium News, Common Dreams, Marxism Leninism Today, Portside, Jewish Currents, Breakthrough News, Liberation Project by Aalia Mauro, The Center for Economic and Policy Research, Amicus with Dahlia Lithwick, Strict Scrutiny, Heather Cox Richardson, The Nation, Brennan Center for Justice, Aaron Maté, Texas Observer, Kairos Center for Religions, Rights and Social Justice, Jeffrey Sachs, John J. Mearsheimer, and Monthly Review.

WHAT ARE THE RISKS WE FACE AND WHAT CAN WE DO?

Trump’s continuation in office represents a threat to the constitutional order, democratic rights, and the planet. We need to put a stop to his dangerous actions and force him to leave office, preferably before his term expires but at a minimum when his term ends. We need to draw strength from the many who seek to protect and promote a diverse multi-racial democracy and reach out with humility to those who hold other views.

We need to expand our grass roots protests in the streets. We need to continue to demonstrate for ending the genocide against Palestinians and the war against Iran. It’s time to pressure our government to accept the reality of a multi-polar world, end its blockade of Cuba, support the international consensus on Palestinian rights, and shift from from direct and proxy wars to diplomacy in Europe and throughout the world. We should be pursuing détente with Russia and China, not confrontation and a new cold war. We need to continue our protests against ICE, for freeing political prisoners, and against all Trump Administration attacks on democracy.

Although there are many reasons to be disappointed about the electoral choices available to us, each of us should help to organize the highest voter turnout that we can muster for candidates who will defend democracy and promote the interests of working people.

We need to write letters to the editor and to our representatives and to talk with our friends, acquaintances, and neighbors about working together for a future in which we care for everyone. At the same time, we need to speak up against Trump’s bigotry, hatred, violations of democracy and the law, and his attempt to return the country to the fearful days of the red scare with labeling of any opponent as a Communist.

We can unite around a positive program to:

restore and preserve democratic rights including reproductive rights, minority voting rights, and affirmative action. This will require the people and the Congress finding a mechanism to reverse the far right Supreme Court’s anti-democratic decisions.
Establish Medicare for All.
Pass legislation to restore the right to unionize.
Cut military spending and end the forever wars.
Increase taxes on the rich and corporations.
Build new housing for millions.
Restore environmental protections and take action on climate change.
Increase the minimum wage to a living wage.
Guarantee a job at a living wage for all.
Expand support for public education and provide free access to college or technical training for all.
Reduce the work week to 30 hours per week.
Establish a national child care program.

There have been mass movements and proposed legislation on several of the above reforms in the past and a widespread movement for Medicare for All today.¹⁵ When we succeed once again in removing Trump from office, the opportunity to create fundamental changes in the interest of working people should not be missed.

NOTES

1. he has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it’s most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. this piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the CHRISTIAN king of Great Britain. determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce: and that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, & murdering the people upon whom he also obtruded them; thus paying off former crimes committed against the liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another. Library of Congress, Declaring Independence: Drafting the Documents, Jefferson’s “original Rough draught” of the Declaration of Independence. https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/declara/ruffdrft.html

2. Sean Wilentz, “The Radicalism of Northern Abolition,” The New England Quarterly 2023; 96 (1): 8–26. doi: https://doi.org/10.1162/tneq_a_00971

3. Alan Kennedy-Shaffer, “Voters in a Foreign Land: Alien Suffrage and Citizenship in the United States,1704-1926” (2009). Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects. William & Mary. Paper 1539626580.https://dx.doi.org/doi:10.21220/s2-115t-9130

4. Griff Stockley, “Elaine Massacre of 1919,” Encyclopedia of Arkansas, https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/entries/elaine-massacre-of-1919-1102/.

5. Brad Snyder, You Can’t Kill a Man because of the Books He Reads : Angelo Herndon’s Fight for Free Speech (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2025).

6. Martin Halpern, “What We Can Learn On the 80th Anniversary of the San Antonio 1939 Municipal Auditorium Riot,” History News Network, August 25, 2019, https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/172841

7. Erika Lee, “Anti-Asian Violence Isn’t Un-American. It’s a Racist Tradition That Goes Back Over 150 Years,” Densho, March 22, 2021. https://densho.org/catalyst/anti-asian-violence-isntun-american-its-a-racist-tradition-that-goes-back-over-150-years/; Julie Des Jardins, “From Citizen to Enemy: The Tragedy of Japanese Internment,” GIld Lehrman Institute of American History. https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-resources/essays/citizen-enemy-tragedyjapanese-internment; Dynia, Philip A.. “World War II.” The First Amendment Encyclopedia, August 10, 2023. https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/world-war-ii/.

8. Martin Halpern, Unions, Radicals and Democratic Presidents: Seeking Social Change in the Twentieth Century (Greenwood Press, 2003), 128.

9. Barry T. Hirsch, David A. Macpherson, and Wayne G. Vroman, “Estimates of union density by State,” Monthly Labor Review, July 2001, 54. https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2001/07/ressum2.pdf

10. E.J. Dionne, Jr. and Max Keeney, “Obomacare’s Popularity is the Republicans’ Problem,” December 18, 2025, The Brookings Institution. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/obamacarespopularity-is-the-republicans-problem/

11. Greg Iacurci, “As ACA enrollment falls by millions, Trump administration and policy gurus disagree on why,” Juyl 3, 2026, CNBC. https://www.cnbc.com/2026/07/03/aca-enrollmentenhanced-subsidies-lapse-fraud.html

12. Patrick Marley, “Trump fires members of bipartisan elections commission,” Washington Post, July 10, 2026. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/07/10/trump-gutsindependent-elections-board-ahead-midterms/

13. Bureau of Labor Statistics News Release, February18, 2026. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/union2.pdf.

14. “New Poll Shows 7 in 10 Americans Support Labor Unions,” American Federation of Government Employees, October 16, 2023.https://www.afge.org/article/new-poll-shows-7-in-10-americans-support-labor-unions.

15. Martin Halpern, “Five Forgotten Reforms Worth Remembering,” CounterPunch, September 28, 2017. https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/09/28/five-forgotten-reform-attempts-worthremembering. Also published by History News Network as “Five Forgotten Reforms Liberals Should Back,” October 22, 2017, https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/167049.

Remembering Paul Robeson and Freedomways Magazine

Martin Halpern — Wed, 11 Feb 2026 15:54:19 GMT

“Fifty years ago today, February 11, 1976, my comrades and I held a “Tribute to Paul Robeson: Actor, Singer, Fighter for Black Freedom, Peace and the Rights of Labor.” The program was held at the William Monroe Trotter House on the University of Michigan campus. The sponsors were the Marxist Forum and the Young Workers Liberation League. The speaker was Charles Wright, Doctor of Medicine, playwright, Founder and Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Afro-American Museum of Detroit, and author of the pioneering work, Robeson: Labor’s Forgotten Champion (1975).

The idea of organizing a Robeson tribute occurred to me when I read Wright’s book. I had written a seminar paper on the 1941 strike by the United Auto Workers (UAW) at the Ford Motor Company and was working on my dissertation on the UAW in the cold war era. Wright’s work included a fine account of Robeson’s support not only for the UAW but for public workers and workers in the longshore, tobacco, and maritime, industries and on sugar plantations in Hawaii.

The venue for our tribute, the William Monroe Trotter House, had been established as a center for Black students, one of the demands of the successful 1970 Black Action Movement strike in which I had participated. Standing at the corner of Washtenaw Avenue and S. University Street, the building was a beautiful mansion built for Kappa Sigma Alpha fraternity in 1924 at the cost of $125,000. We met in a large and comfortable room appropriate for the occasion. The gathering was deeply moved by Wright’s presentation, a slide show, and Robeson recordings.

We had been planning the event for some time when news of Robeson’s death on January 23, 1976, reached the public. Obituaries in major national publications brought attention to our meeting. On the day of our gathering the local newspaper, the Ann Arbor News publicized the event and included personal tributes from Jerry Hoag, “dean of Ann Arbor theater managers” and Dr. Eva Jessye, “the city’s distinguished lady of song.” The Eva Jessye Choir had performed with Robeson on “All God’s Children” in 1940 on the CBS network.

The story in the Michigan Daily, the student paper, about our meeting quoted Wright: “even his worst enemies couldn’t say he didn’t have integrity. He was an extremely sincere individual who only wanted to change Democracy and the United States for the better.” In their personal accounts of their interactions with Robeson, both Jessye and Hoag emphasized his warmth and his interest in and caring for all people. He was a “humanitarian, always had time for the ‘little people,’” Jessye said, “and was wonderful to work with.”

Paul Robeson’s Family Background

Robeson was born in Princeton, New Jersey in 1898. His father, William Drew Robeson, had escaped slavery with a brother via the Underground Railroad in 1860 and worked as a laborer for the Union Army during the Civil War. At Lincoln College (later university) he earned two degrees and met Maria Louisa Bustill. They married in 1878 and had seven children; Paul was the youngest.

Paul’s father was a pastor for twenty years at Witherspoon Street Presbyterian Church in Princeton and his mother was a schoolteacher. Losing his position at the Princeton church because of his activism, Robeson’s father worked odd jobs for a time and eventually regained a pulpit at African Methodist Episcopal churches in other New Jersey communities. His mother died due to an accident when Paul was six.

Robeson’s Accomplishments

His parents’ emphasis on education combined with Robeson’s many gifts and steadiness led to his winning a scholarship to Rutgers College. He lettered in four sports, was an all-American football player, and was class valedictorian. He graduated from Columbia Law School but practiced law only briefly because of the discrimination he faced at the law firm he joined.

While at Columbia, Robeson met and married Eslanda Cardoza Goode, who was working at the Columbia Medical Center as a chemist. They remained partners until her death in 1965.

A renowned singer, Robeson also was a famous stage and film actor, a linguist, author, professional football player, and an activist. Paul and Eslanda, who managed her husband’s career, traveled to the Loyalist front lines in Spain where Paul sang. In London, Paul and Eslanda met Africans, some of whom became leaders of their countries. The West African Student Union made them honorary members. While in London, he met Lawrence Brown, who encouraged him to sing African American spirituals and became his accompanist for more than three decades.

Robeson spoke out regularly and worked tirelessly for civil rights, labor rights, the independence of colonies in Africa and Asia, and against fascism. He wrote a regular newspaper column and was a leader of the Council on African Affairs, the National Negro Congress, and other progressive groups.

Eslanda Goode Robeson’s Family and Accomplishments

Born in 1895 in Washington, D.C., Eslanda Cardozo Goode’s family background included a father who was a clerk in the War Department and a grandfather who was an official in South Carolina during Reconstruction. After earning her degree in chemistry from Columbia University, she headed a department at New York-Presbyterian Hospital. She was an actress, an anthropologist, an activist, and an author. Her books include Paul Robeson: Negro (1930), African Journey (1945), and American Argument (1949) with Pearl Buck. She worked for civil rights, women’s rights, and the independence of colonial countries in Africa and Asia.

The Ballad of Americans

A few months after the Robesons returned from almost a decade abroad, on November 5,1939, Paul Robeson performed the Ballad of Americans on the CBS network. The song was written by Earl Robinson and John Latouche. Appearing on Norman Corwin’s variety show, Pursuit of Happiness, Robeson was accompanied by the amateur People’s Chorus and sang before an audience of six hundred. The studio audience applauded for nearly fifteen minutes and there was an immense response from radio listeners. The CBS switchboard was tied up for two hours with phone calls of thanks and numerous letters followed.

Robeson and Earl Robinson preparing for Ballad of Americans broadcast.

Robeson performed Ballad for Americans before many labor union and progressive organizations and a record album sold well. Bing Crosby made a record of the song, too, and the song was performed at the Republican and Communist Party conventions in 1940. It was Robeson’s version that was particularly powerful. The song recounts episodes in U.S. history from the American revolution on when liberty was at stake and “nobody who was anybody believed it.” The chorus asks repeatedly Robeson, “Hey, who are you?” to which he first hints that he is Black America but eventually replies, “America!” The song emphasizes unity of all ethnic and racial groups and completing the revolutionary vision of liberty and equality for all.

Cold War Repression and Resistance

The ending of the World War II alliance of United States with the Soviet Union and the onset of the cold war led to the eruption of anti-communism at home. Two key episodes in 1947 were the passage of the Taft-Hartley Act and the House Un-American Activities Committee’s investigation of Hollywood writers and directors. The inclusion of a non-Communist affidavit provision in Taft-Hartley threatened left-wing unions’ access to the National Labor Relations Board. The Hollywood witnesses’ refusal to testify based on their First Amendment rights led to their imprisonment as they received no aid from the Supreme Court. Blacklisting took place in the film industry and across most other employment spheres.

Robeson joined with other left-wing figures in supporting the Progressive Party campaign of Henry Wallace in 1948. The failure of the campaign to secure a significant vote led to the isolation of the left. Paul Robeson was beloved by millions of people in the United States and throughout the world. Because he stood up to those who hated communism and the Soviet Union during the early years of the cold war, the powers that be waged an unrelenting campaign of denunciation and pressure against him.

Peekskill Riots

Given Robeson’s prominence, it’s not surprising that the biggest and most extreme attack on the left came at a Robeson concert. Robeson had sung at concerts in Peekskill, a Hudson Valley community forty miles north of New York City, prior to the cold war. His 1949 appearance was sponsored by the Harlem chapter of the Civil Rights Congress, which the U.S. Attorney General had recently cited as a subversion organization. The local newspaper, veterans’ groups, and the Junior Chamber of Commerce mobilized to oppose the concert. Roads were blocked, and those who managed to get to the concert site were assaulted. No concert took place.

At a protest meeting in Harlem, Robeson vowed to return to Peekskill. Twenty-five thousand attended the September 4, 1949, concert, which went off as scheduled. Left-wing trade unionists had prepared for the event and provided effective protection to Robeson and to the attendees. However, violent anti-communist groups mobilized, too, and threw rocks and stones at buses and cars as concertgoers drove south to the city, causing hundreds of injuries. Police joined in the attacks on concert goers. As motorists took alternative routes to escape the attackers, the riot extended over a ten-mile area. A stone through the windshield of Robeson’s car hit Irving Potash, a leader of the Fur and Leather Workers Union, and caused him to lose sight in one eye.

The state district attorney, investigating at the behest of Governor Thomas Dewey, claimed that Robeson’s supporters “provoked the violence.” Peekskill was neither the first nor the last violent attack on left-wing working-class partisans, but it meant that efforts to organize left-wing gatherings would have to contend with the threat of violence for years to come.

One non-left-wing voice critical of the violence was that of Eleanor Roosevelt. She commented that “it seems to me quite disgraceful to allow this kind of lawlessness.” At the same time, she emphasized that she disagreed with Robeson’s ideas and was “particularly sorry to hear that one of the buses and a number of cars which were manhandled . . . were cars that were returning from the Hyde Park Memorial Library and held no people who had been to the Robeson concert.” She also repeated the usual argument that the attackers were just giving “the Communists good material for propaganda.”

Robeson was “unbowed,” Gerald Horne comments and “took off on a whirlwind tour, designed to rally support against the dangerous ultra-right pestilence.” On September 30, 1949, seventeen thousand were present to hear Robeson at a program honoring the 70^th anniversary of the California Eagle, a progressive African American newspaper. But in other places, venues were cancelled and the “scent of violence . . . was a deterrent to his making public appearances.”[1]

Robeson’s response to right-wing and state-supported violence at Peekskill included testifying as a witness for the defense of the leaders of the Communist Party accused of violating the Smith Act. Robeson served as co-chair of National Non-Partisan Committee to Defend the Rights of the Twelve Communist Leaders. Two weeks after the second Peekskill riot, he testified as a defense witness in the Smith Act trial. Robeson knew all the defendants. Attorney George Crockett sought to have Robeson testify about having heard Communist leaders speak many times but never heard any advocacy of the overthrow of the U.S. government by force and violence. The charge against them was conspiracy to advocate such ideas. The judge disallowed such testimony and would not allow Crockett to ask Robeson if he had appeared on a platform with Eleanor Roosevelt.[2]

Robeson and Freedom Newspaper

In 1950, a group of African American left-wing activists, most of them Communists, worked with Robeson to establish Freedom, a weekly newspaper based in Harlem. Several of the key figures – Esther Jackson, Edward Strong, and Louis Burnham, had been active in the Southern Negro Youth Congress, a Communist-led group that had folded in 1949 despite its significant organizing successes. Also participating were Communist historian Herbert Aptheker, activists from the newly founded National Negro Labor Council, and artists Ruby Dee, Ossie Davis and Harry Belafonte from the Committee for the Negro Arts.

Freedom featured a column by Robeson on its front page, coverage of civil rights, labor unions, struggles for peace and the independence of the colonial countries, the Black church, and sports. The paper publicized Robeson’s activities and his struggle to regain his passport, which the State Department revoked in 1950. There were also cartoons and letters to the editor. The first issue of Freedom appeared in November 1950, fewer than five months after the start of the Korean War. The anti-Communist hysteria evident at Peekskill reached new heights during the war.

Despite the intensification of anti-communism, the late 1940s and early 1950s was also a period of civil rights advances with the integration of baseball and of the military. The major white-owned newspapers hired more African American reporters and gave greater coverage of the African American community. The circulation of major Black newspapers declined. Facing anti-communist hostility and financial difficulties, Freedom folded in 1955.

The Robesons Defy Congressional Committees

The climate of anti-communist hysteria could not have been greater when Eslanda Robeson was called before Senator Joseph McCarthy’s Senate subcommittee in 1953; the Rosenbergs had been executed just two weeks prior to her appearance. She refused to answer questions about whether she was a member of the Communist Party citing both the Fifth and Fifteenth amendments. She declared, “As a Negro and a second class citizen I have been fighting against racial discrimination all my life.” She told the all-white Senate sub-committee: “I know a lot about the force and violence used against my people in this country.”[3]

Paul was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in 1956. In response to his legal effort to regain his passport, revoked by the State Department in 1950, the government insisted in 1954 that he sign a non-Communist affidavit in 1954. He refused to do so. When HUAC asked if he were a member of the Communist Party, his stance was defiant: “What do you mean by the Communist Party? As far as I know it is a legal party like the Republican Party and the Democratic Party. Do you mean a party of people who have sacrificed for my people, and for all Americans and workers, that they can live in dignity? Do you mean that party?”

When Robeson invoked the Fifth Amendment, committee chair Francis E. Walter (Democrat of Pennsylvania) wouldn’t let it go and insisted he explain how answering the question of CP membership might incriminate him. In reply, Robeson praised Communists throughout the world: “Gentlemen, in the first place, wherever I have been in the world, Scandinavia, England, and many places, the first to die in the struggle against Fascism were the Communists and I laid many wreaths upon graves of Communists.”

Robeson also spoke passionately about his family’s deep American roots and the African American freedom struggle:

“I am being tried for fighting for the rights of my people, who are still second-class citizens in this United States of America. My mother was born in your state, Mr. Walter, and my mother was a Quaker, and my ancestors in the time of Washington baked bread for George Washington’s troops when they crossed the Delaware, and my own father was a slave.

“I stand here struggling for the rights of my people to be full citizens in this country. And they are not. They are not in Mississippi. And they are not in Montgomery, Alabama. And they are not in Washington. They are nowhere, and that is why I am here today. You want to shut up every Negro who has the courage to stand up and fight for the rights of his people, for the rights of workers, and I have been on many a picket line for the steelworkers too. And that is why I am here today. . . .”

Robeson finally regained his passport in 1958 due to a Supreme Court decision. Three years later, Freedomways magazine was founded.

The Founding of Freedomways

Freedomways was founded in 1961 by Esther Jackson and several other veterans of the SNYC who had been involved in establishing Freedom. Also participating were W.E.B. DuBois and Shirley Graham DuBois. Jackson served as managing editor with John Henrik Clarke and Jack O’Dell as associate editors. Many leading Harlem writers appeared in the pages of the magazine including Lorraine Hansberry, James Baldwin, Alice Walker, Langston Hughes, Sterling Brown, and Kenneth B. Clark. The magazine was closely associated with the civil rights movement and continued Freedom’s emphasis on internationalism. The opening reception for the magazine included a speech by Congo’s Ambassador to the United Nations.

Closely associated with the radical Black Arts movement, Freedomways included poems, stories, and works of art. Freedomways represented continuity with the popular front of the 1930s and 1940s as it advocated broad coalitions, Black radicalism, peace, and anti-imperialism. The magazine closed in 1985.

Freedomways and Robeson

In April 1965, Freedomways held a salute to Robeson. Both Robeson and his wife Eslanda were present. The actor Ossie Davis was the emcee for the occasion. Freedomways published three of the speeches from that evening in its summer issue including Robeson’s “It’s Good to be Back,” and “Paul Robeson: Inspirer of Youth,” by John Lewis, then National Chairman of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).

“In many ways,” Lewis declared, “we in SNCC are Robeson’s spiritual children. We, too, have rejected gradualism and moderation. We, too, have called for nationwide protests and massive organizing of ordinary people. We, too, have met African leaders, and we, too, have made enemies of some of our erstwhile supporters. . . . We, too, have been accused of being radicals, and of ‘Communist influence’ and for the same reasons as Robeson. Such accusations are inevitable when you speak out independent and radically.”

In his address to the gathering, Robeson emphasized the importance of the arts, especially music. He expressed appreciation for the songs that were included in the program, songs that “inspire, encourage, sustain, and unite the thousands participants.” He mentioned such signature songs as Climbing Jacob’s Ladder and Go Down, Moses and closed with the first stanza of the Song of the Warsaw Ghetto:

“Never say that you have reached the very end,
When leaden skies a bitter future may portend;
For sure the hour for which we yearn will yet arrive,
And our marching step will thunder: we survive!”

Robeson’s participation in Freedomways’ 1965 “Welcome Home” program was his last public appearance. Six years later, Freedomways devoted its first 1971 issue to “Robeson: The Great Forerunner.” The issue included poems by Nikki Giovanni and Gwendolyn Brooks and tributes by Jomo Kenyatta, Jawaharlal Nehru, Margaret Burroughs, Dick Gregory, Alice Childress, Shirley Graham DuBois, Willliam L. Patterson, and George Murphy, Jr. There were essays by Lloyd Brown, J.H. O’Dell, Paul Robeson, Jr., Sterling Stuckey on Robeson and culture, and Harry Edwards on Robeson and sports. The volume include selections from Robeson’s writings and speeches and a comprehensive Robeson bibliography by Ernest Kaiser.

My Connections to Robeson and Freedomways

I’ve felt a strong connection to Robeson since my childhood. We had several Paul Robeson records in our house and our parents always spoke highly of him. The violent assault on Robeson and concert goers at Peekskill, New York, in 1949 shook my parents. On one occasion, our parents were out and my older brother Ron was playing a Robeson record loud enough so that it could be heard in the courtyard of our Brooklyn apartment. Our mom rushed upstairs and told him to stop playing the record. Our parents knew and got along with their neighbors, but this was a scary time for those who were in or close to the Communist Party.

As a leader of a left-wing union, my dad was subject to a congressional subpoena. He went into hiding for a few days and so was never served. My dad had come to the United States as a child and was aware that the authorities were revoking the citizenship of some accused Communists and then deporting them. He was acting to avoid that fate.

Our parents kept their Robeson records. I continued to listen to Robeson records from our family collection long after I left home and bought new ones. Among my favorite albums were the 1942 “Songs of Free Men,” the “Peace Arch Concerts” that Robeson performed at the border between the United States and Canada in 1952 and 1953 when his right to travel outside the country was taken away, and the 1958 “Robeson Live at Carnegie Hall” album when he regained the right to travel. The concerts at the border were attended by audiences of about 30,000 and the Carnegie Hall concert was sold out.

When I was a student at City College of New York (CCNY) and began studying Marxism, Robeson loomed large. I was a regular reader of Freedomways so learned a lot about Robeson from the magazine. One of my most memorable experiences during my time at CCNY was attending the February 23, 1968, Freedomways celebration of the hundredth anniversary of the birth of W.E.B. DuBois.

I’d been reading DuBois since I was a high school student and took the Long Island Railroad and the subway to Brooklyn College to read Black Reconstruction at the Brooklyn College Library. Dr. John Hope Franklin, my brother’s history professor, had put the book on reserve.

As I later wrote in an essay published in Afro-Americans in New York Life and History, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s keynote speech “Honoring Dr. DuBois” stunned me. I’d long admired Dr. King. The first demonstration that I organized when I was a student at Cornell University was a march in sympathy with Dr. King and the Selma to Montgomery voting rights campaigners. I commented:

“King reminded the audience that Du Bois was a Communist, named other leading cultural figures who were Communists and stated, ‘We have to end our insane paranoia about communism.’ For a mainstream figure of substantial influence to add to the critique of the anti-communist rationale of U.S. policy in Vietnam an attempt to tear down the wall against Communist participation in the body politic built up in the early days of the cold war represented the most radical challenge to the politics of the status quo imaginable.”

Twenty months after the Carnegie Hall celebration, I invited Jack O’Dell, the Freedomways associate managing editor, to the University of Michigan to speak. As the New Mobilization Committee to End the Vietnam War shut down the campus for the October 15, 1969, Moratorium, I wanted to ensure students were exposed to radical ideas. O’Dell was part of a panel on workers and the war. He emphasized the impact of the war on African Americans. The other speakers were Victor Perlo, chair of the Economics Commission of the Communist Party, who spoke on the economics of the war, and Duane Frankie, a member of UAW Local 600, who emphasized the need to “find the left.” Among other speakers that day were Coleman Young, future Detroit mayor, then a state senator, and previously a leader of the National Negro Labor Council, which Robeson strongly supported.

Robeson’s Funeral

Paul Robeson’s funeral took place on January 27, 1976, in the Mother A.M.E. Zion Church in Harlem. The service opened with one of Robeson’s favorite hymns, “We Are Climbing Jacob’s Ladder” and closed with a recording of Robeson singing “Deep River.” Among those giving tributes were Lloyd L. Brown, who had worked with Robeson on Freedom and on Robeson’s book, Here I Stand, and Paul Robeson, Jr. Among the pall bearers were playwright Douglas Turner Ward, Harry Belefonte, and Steve Nelson, national commander of the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. Over 5,000 attended the funeral, with many standing in the rain. He was interred at Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York.

In his eulogy, according to Charlayne Hunter’s New York Times story, Bishop J. Clinton Hoggard paraphrased Robeson:

“Don’t mourn for me, but live for freedom’s cause during this Bicentennial of America and say to any and all who may urge you to leave America that: ‘Because our ancestors were slaves, and our people died to build this country, we are going to stay right here and have a part of it, just like you.”

“And no Fascist‐minded people will drive us from it. Is that clear?”

Robeson’s example and courage are worth remembering during this time of rising resistance to fascism.

Sources

Ballad of an American: A Graphic Biography of Paul Robeson by (artist) Sharon Rudhal. Edited by Paul Buhle and Lawrence Ware. (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2020.

Barg, Lisa, “Paul Robeson’s Ballad for Americans: Race and the Cultural Politics of ‘People’s Music,” Journal of the Society for American Music, 2 (2008). 27-70.

Buck, Pearl S., and Eslanda Goode Robeson. 1949. American Argument. New York: John Day Co.

Halpern, Martin, “Honoring Dr. Du Bois: Martin Luther King’s Most Radical Speech,” Afro-Americans in New York Life and History 39 (2015), 33-82.

Haviland, Sara Rzeszutek, James and Esther Cooper Jackson : Love and Courage in the Black Freedom Movement (Lexington, Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky, 2015).

Horne, Gerald, Paul Robeson: The Artist as Revolutionary (London: Pluto Press, 2016).

Lamphere, Lawrence, “Paul Robeson, Freedom Newspaper, and the Black Press,” (PhD dissertation, Boston College, May 2003).

Paul Robeson House and Museum, Princeton New Jersey, “SHINING A LIGHT ON ESLANDA GOODE ROBESON.”

Ransby, Barbara, Eslanda; The Large and Unconventional Life of Mrs. Paul Robeson (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2022).

Robeson, Eslanda Goode. 1945. African Journey: With 64 Pages of Illustrations. New York: John Day Company.

Robeson, Paul, Here I Stand (Boston, Beacon Press, 1958, 1971, 1988)

Robeson, Susan, The Whole World in His Hands : A Pictorial Biography of Paul Robeson (New York: Carol Pub. Group., 1981)

Rocksborough-Smith, Ian, Bearing the Seeds of Struggle: Freedomways Magazine, Black Leftists, and Continuities in the Freedom Movement (MA thesis, Simon Fraser University, 2005).

Wright, Charles H., Robeson: Labor’s Forgotten Champion (Detroit: Baamp Publishing,1975)

Notes

[1]. Gerald Horne, Paul Robeson: Artist as Revolutionary (London: Pluto Press, 2016), 124-25.

[2]. Russell Porter, “Robeson Testifies for Eleven Communists,” New York Times, September 21, 1949, p. 18.

[3]. Barbara Ransby, Eslanda;the Large and Unconventional Life of Mrs. Paul Robeson (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2022), 223-24.

All Out Friday January 23 for Minnesota

Martin Halpern — Thu, 22 Jan 2026 22:07:09 GMT

On Friday, January 23, 2026, the people of Minneapolis are conducting a general strike to demand that ICE leave the state and that legal action be taken against the agent who killed Renee Good. The Trump Administration has attacked several cities over the past several months. It has concentrated unprecedented deadly force against the city of Minneapolis.

The Minnesota Labor Regional Federation of the AFL-CIO and community groups are calling for a Minneapolis Day of Truth and Freedom and demanding:

· ICE must leave Minnesota now.

· The officer who killed Renee Good must be held legally accountable.

· No additional federal funding for ICE in the upcoming Congressional budget and ICE should be investigated for human and Constitutional violations of Americans and our neighbors.

· We call upon Minnesota and National Companies to become 4th Amendment businesses, cease economic relations with ICE and refuse ICE entry or using their property for staging grounds.

We in other states should come out in the streets in support of Minnesotans to begin to roll back the oppressive apparatus of an out-of-control president and his obedient minions. Our constitution and democracy are at stake.

Minnesota AFL-CIO President Bernie Burnham said:

“ICE’s continued occupation, actions, and tactics are harming communities throughout Minnesota and making us all less safe. They are indiscriminately targeting Minnesotans of color, regardless of citizenship or immigration status. Many people are fearful of daily activities like going to work, shopping for groceries, and sending their children to school.

“Minnesotans have and continue to show up for one another – whether that be delivering food, walking kids to school, or standing watch in our neighborhoods. Following Rene Good’s killing, nonviolent protesters are putting their lives on the line to speak up for basic decency while exercising their constitutionally protected right to free speech.

“On Friday, union members will join with our fellow Minnesotans to reject fear and speak with one voice.”

You can find a place to join others here:

https://iceoutforgood.org/?utm_source=indivisible#nationwide

There is strength and joy in numbers. Let us not let the many outrages and the chaotic actions of an unhinged president exhaust us and lead us to despair. We must continue to fight against the genocide in Gaza and Trump’s imperialist threats against Venezuela, Cuba, Greenland, and many other countries. We must protest against the increase in health care costs imposed by a heartless administration and advocate for Medicare for all. We need housing and a basic living income for all.

The waves of protest on the All Kings Day actions need to continue and to expand. Talk to your family members, co-workers, and neighbors about the need to care for one another and save our democracy and our constitution.

Moving toward a national general strike

A massive general strike in Minneapolis is a step toward a general strike in the whole country. Trump is already weighing cancelling the midterm elections. He told House Republicans: “How we have to even run against these people—I won’t say cancel the election, they should cancel the election, because the fake news would say, ‘He wants the elections canceled. He’s a dictator.’ They always call me a dictator.” A general strike is our weapon against such an assault on our voting rights.

Last year, 250 million people in India went on a general strike over labor issues. Our labor standards and our unions are under assault. Unions and all of us need to fight back to survive. A general strike also took place in France last year over budget cuts. Our country, too, is experiencing big cuts in social services.

French workers have conducted numerous general strikes. In one of his films, perhaps it was Capitalism: A Love Story, Michael Moore commented that in France the government was afraid of the people while in the U.S., the people were afraid of the government.

“We the people” are the power

We need to lose our fear of our government and of each other. Let’s talk to each other, trust each other, and remember that “we the people” are the power in the United States. We do the caring, the teaching, and the work that keeps our country going.

We must use the power we have to push back against the authoritarian and, indeed, fascist actions of this administration and to create a better, more inclusive, more caring country for all of us.

Support Minnesotans on Friday January 23. Remember Renee Good and the many others whose lives have been taken and whose rights have been violated.

For a good analysis of the current moment, see Mark Harris, “Resistance Grows to Trump’s War Against Humanity.”

The Epstein Files and Minority Health

Martin Halpern — Thu, 20 Nov 2025 18:42:14 GMT

The public won an important victory in the vote of Congress to release the Epstein files. President Donald Trump has tried to bury the story of his connection with Jeffrey Epstein, attacked those of his supporters who were calling for the release of the files, and pointed investigators to Epstein’s connections with Bill Clinton and others. Of course, Trump could have released the files without any congressional vote, and the release is still subject to actions of his obedient subordinates. Nevertheless, while Trump continues to abuse the considerable power he has, Congress’ action showed that his power is not absolute and that ordinary people also exercise power.

People Power

In her book, No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power in the New Gilded Age, Jane F. McAlevey emphasizes that “the masses” of working people have power when they are organized. Though the elites want us to think they have all the power, working people who organize to achieve their goals also are able to exercise power.[1]

Is forcing the release of the Epstein files is an example of the working class exercising power? Outrage over Trump’s and other elite figures ties to Epstein was widespread. Calls for the release of the files came from all over the political spectrum. Understanding the political context of Trump’s pseudo-populist appeals to white workers is key.

Tax breaks for the rich, destroying programs that benefit workers and the poor, and Trump’s support for the Israeli genocide created doubts among some in the MAGA base. About 7 percent of Trump voters chose Democratic candidates in this month’s election. Enough Republicans felt the pressure of their voters’ visceral anger to defy Trump and vote for the release of the Epstein files. Hence Trump’s capitulation.

African American Representatives on the Epstein Case

Congressman Kweisi Mfume of Maryland, a member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, met with survivors and commented, “Black America should be concerned because this is a classic case of how the rich and powerful are still able to oppress and deny basic justice.” He added: “This is not only about the horrific actions of Epstein and [Ghislaine] Maxwell, but also about the wider network of individuals who enable, conceal, and turn their heads away in the face of exploitation. If it can happen to them, it can happen to anybody.”

In the view of Congresswoman Sydney Kankakee-Dove of California, “This cover-up only exposes what Black people already know. There are laws but two sets of rules. There are those who get walked on and those who look for more bodies to abuse.” She added, “we need to continue to expose and shame these actions and demand real accountability.”[2] In her speech in support of the vote to release the files, Kankakee-Dove commented, “One in three women and girls around the world are physically and sexually assaulted each year. Of the 152 women in this body, that means 51 women. It includes your daughters, your sisters, your nieces, your mothers. And with the Epstein files, we have a chance to change that.”

What has this to do with minority health?

Trump’s pseudo-populism is rooted in white nationalism and hostility to immigrants and people of color. His administration has been engaged in a continuous assault on the needs of people of color and the poor. The attack on DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) programs is an attempt to fully reverse the gains of the civil rights movement and return to the days of a segregated United States.

Among the casualties of the Trump Administration’s assaults on DEI are several offices of minority health. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., “has gutted at least seven minority health offices across the department. . . and has laid off a significant share of workers at those offices, or in some cases all of them, along with their directors.”[3]

Health policy experts told CNBC that “deep cuts to those divisions could widen existing health disparities in the U.S., undoing years of progress toward addressing them. Over time, that could worsen health outcomes for already underserved groups, threaten overall public health, strain the U.S. health-care system and drive up health-care costs.”

Dr. Stephanie Ettinger De Cuba, research professor of health law, policy and management at Boston University commented: “It will have negative health impacts, obviously, for groups that they’re focused on, so racial and ethnic minorities, but I think what gets missed in the story is it ultimately impacts all of us, no matter what your background is.”

Citing the view of health experts, journalist Annika Kim Constantino noted that “addressing those disparities leads to stronger overall public health, as healthier communities improve outcomes for everyone.”

Minority Health Report, 1985

Forty years ago, President Ronald Reagan was in the White House. The offices of minority health which exist today owe their origin to the 1985 Report of the Secretary’s Task Force on Black and Minority Health. Margaret Heckler, Reagan’s secretary of Health and Human Services created the historic task force, which produced an eight-volume report.

Reagan was not thinking of the needs of people of color when he appointed Margaret Heckler. During his run for president in 1980, he campaigned at the Neshoba County Fairground and declared, “I believe in states’ rights.” Speaking in the county where three civil rights workers were murdered by the Ku Klux Klan in 1964, Reagan failed to mention the crimes and instead appealed to white supremacist supporters of George Wallace.

Although Reagan was a leader of his party’s right-wing, the Republican Party still included moderates like Heckler. Indeed, in 1965, the vast majority of Republicans in both houses supported the most radical piece of civil rights legislation, the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Heckler was a former member of the House of Representatives from Massachusetts, a founder of the Congressional Caucus for Women’s Issues, a key sponsor of the 1974 Equal Credit Opportunity Act, and a supporter of the Equal Rights Amendment.[4] Heckler’s daughter-in-law published a biography of her this year.[5]

Inspiring Heckler to appoint the task force on minority health, was a meeting with African American medical school leaders. They presented her the Association of Minority Health Professions Schools’ study entitled Blacks and the Health Professions in the 1980s: A National Crisis and a Time for Action. Influenced also by Congressman Louis Stokes and the Congressional Black Caucus, Heckler established the task force in 1984.[6]

The task force concluded that there were 60,000 excess death each year of Blacks and other minorities due to health disparities. It recommended a number of measures to reduce the gap. The recommendations included the creation of an infrastructure to pay attention to minority health needs, bans on discrimination, improvements in access to primary care and in data collection. All of these advances are under severe threat from the Trump Administration.

Minority Health in Michigan

I have a strong personal connection to the issue of minority health. In the sixties I was a civil rights worker in Tennessee. As a grad student at the University of Michigan. I supported the Black Action Movement strike and, afterward, I continued to support affirmative action at the university and in my later career.

When the Report of the Secretary’s Task Force on Black and Minority Health appeared, I was a researcher at the Michigan Department of Public Health. I undertook a research project on the topic of minority health in Michigan. The project became a Task Force on Minority Health Affairs with representatives from the health professions, Black, Hispanic, Asian American, Native American, and Arab Americans organizations, health advocacy groups, and representatives of both business and labor and the Democratic and Republican parties. The resulting report, Minority Health in Michigan: Closing the Gap (1988) led to the creation of an Office of Minority Health and programmatic advances.

What is to Be Done?

Millions of people have been out in the streets defending free speech, immigrants targeted by ICE, and Trump’s authoritarianism. The Trump-Kennedy attacks on minority health and public health in general threaten us all. We need a concerted campaign by health professional organizations, consumer groups, labor unions, and minority and women’s organizations to reverse the assaults on our lives as well as our liberties.

NOTES

[1]. Jane F. McAlevey, No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power in the New Gilded Age (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018).

[2]. April Ryan, Why Black people should be concerned about the Jeffrey Epstein case,” Post News Group, September 4, 2025, https://postnewsgroup.com/why-black-people-should-be-concerned-about-the-jeffrey-epstein-case/.

[3]. Annika Kim Constantino, “RFK Jr. is gutting minority health offices across HHS that are key to reducing health disparities,” CNBC, Apr 30 2025. https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/30/rfk-jr-hhs-job-cuts-minority-health-offices.html

[4]. Marjorie Hunter, “Woman in the News; Reagan’s Choice For Health Chief: Margaret Mary Heckler,” New York Times, Jan. 13, 1983; Breaking Barriers: The Margaret Heckler Story, BC Law School Magazine, April 2, 2025.

[5]. Kimberly Heckler, A Woman of Firsts: Margaret Heckler, Political Trailblazer (Essex, Connecticut: Lyons Press., 2025).

[6]. J. Nadine Gracia, “Remembering Margaret Heckler’s Commitment To Advancing Minority Health,” Health Affairs, November 16, 2018. https://www.healthaffairs.org/content/forefront/remembering-margaret-heckler-s-commitment-advancing-minority-health.

Labor’s Untold Story: Seventy Years Ago, and Today

Martin Halpern — Sun, 02 Nov 2025 21:32:42 GMT

In 1955, Cameron Associates published Richard O. Boyer and Herbert Morais’ Labor’s Untold Story. was published by Cameron Associates, Established by Angus Cameron, the former editor-in-chief of Little Brown & Company, the company was a small left-wing publishing house. Cameron had resigned from Little Brown after he had been red-baited. Ten years later, a second edition was published by another left-wing house, Marzani and Munsell. Then, in 1970, the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE) published a third edition. It has remained in print ever since.

Written and published by left-wingers of the generation that participated in the popular front and union struggles of the depression, the New Deal, and World War II, Labor’s Untold Story served as a crucial educational tool for the sixties’ generation. Many members of the New Left emphasized their independence from the orbit of the Communist-led left of the 1930s and 1940s. Nevertheless, many new leftists embraced a text written by blacklisted writers of the Communist-led left. Labor’s Untold Story’s engaging style, personal stories, and commitment to radicalism and equality drew them in and brought them closer to a working-class perspective. Labor’s Untold Story had a sizeable impact on the sixties’ generation of which I’m a part.

The UE says there have been 29 printings of Labor’s Untold Story. WorldCat lists 33 editions. The cover of the 1970 edition includes the sentence: “The adventure story of the battles, betrayals and victories of American working men and women.”

Although Labor’s Untold Story never has had a commercial publisher, it is still being read today. There are 261 ratings for the book on Goodreads and 64 reviews on Amazon, mostly 5 star.

An Exciting Read

At a time when the academic field of labor history was dominated by economists who focused on craft unions as institutions, Labor’s Untold Story provided bottoms up dramatic stories of working people revolting against terrible conditions to gain power in their workplaces and equality in society. It includes engaging personal stories of workers, labor leaders, and of capitalists, too. The authors draw on numerous primary sources from speeches, letters, newspaper articles, and government reports. Sharply dissenting from the elite view that the history of unionism is a tale of a special interest, Boyer and Morais write: “Fundamentally, labor’s story is the story of the American people.” (1)

Key Themes

The book starts with a chapter entitled, “Be Jubilant, My Feet!” a reference to the African American people’s struggle for freedom from slavery during the Civil War. The centrality of the black struggle for freedom and equality is a theme throughout the work. Focusing on the period from the Civil War through the cold war red scare, Labor’s Untold Story focuses on working people’s struggles against the growing power of monopoly, the need for grass roots initiative and workers’ unity across race, gender, and political lines. It emphasizes the destructive impact of anti-communism.

The Authors

Richard M. Boyer was a newspaper reporter in St. Louis, Dallas, Boston, and New York. He wrote many engaging long-form profiles for The New Yorker. That magazine’s emphasis on personal stories of individuals is also evident in Labor’s Untold Story. Among Boyer’s other books are The Dark Ship, about the National Maritime Union, and The Legend of John Brown: A Biography and a History. In 1956, he claimed his rights under the First and Fifth Amendments when asked whether he was a Communist Party member or knew Communists. He died in 1973.

Morais received his Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1934 and taught at Brooklyn College where he served as chair of the College Teachers Union chapter. In the wake of the Rapp-Coudert investigation of Communism in New York education, he resigned in 1942 rather than face certain firing. Philip and Jack Foner also lost their positions. After his departure from Brooklyn College, he taught at Communist schools in New York and then worked in the research department of the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers. Morais’s other works include The Struggle for American Freedom: The First Two Hundred Years, The History of the Negro in Medicine and, with William Cahn, Gene Debs: The Story of a Fighting American. He died in 1970.

Labor’s Untold Story and Me

I don’t recall when I first read Labor’s Untold Story, but I imagine it was in 1970 when the UE’s edition first appeared. On my parents’ bookshelf when I was growing up was Morais’s 1944 book, The Struggle for American Freedom, which I had dipped into if not read cover to cover.

In some of the Marxist study groups I led, I copied the example of my mentor, Harold Collins, and began with Marxist philosophy and Howard Selsam and Harry Martel’s Reader in Marxist Philosophy. But Labor’s Untold Story figured prominently in the books I used in study groups and in the classes I conducted both as a left-wing activist and later as a college professor of history. As a teaching assistant at the Residential College at the University of Michigan, I used Labor’s Untold Story as the text for a course I developed and taught entitled, “The Making of the Multi-Racial U.S. Working Class.

1955: A Thawing in the Cold War but Damage Remained

Labor’s Untold Story appeared when the blacklist was still in effect, but there were also the first signs of a thaw in the cold war. 1955 was the year of the “Spirit of Geneva.” Leaders of the United States, Britain, and France met with leaders of the Soviet Union for the first time since World War II. Although several days of meetings in the Swiss city led to no agreements on issues such as the unification of Germany and nuclear arms stockpiles, the discussions were cordial and led to a lessening of tensions. It would be eight years before a breakthrough toward détente was achieved under John Kennedy.

The thawing of the cold war in the 1955-1963 period was good news for labor unions and progressives. However, the continuous assault on left-wing unions and activists and on free speech and free association in the 1947 -1954 period had made it much harder to launch the grass roots working class struggles that Labor’s Untold Story so movingly described. Corporations and their allies in government and the two major parties had succeeded in ousting left-wing union officials and activists from their influential roles in the union movement.

Labor since 1955

Movements for racial and gender equality and liberation have been central to progressive struggles in the period since the publication of Labor’s Untold Story. Working people have been key to these movements and to the advances the oppressed achieved in many areas of the economy and cultural life. The roles of women and minorities in the leadership of the labor movement have expanded a great deal, too.

There have been gains for unions in several areas of the economy especially in the public sector and in health care. In recent years, grass roots movements at companies like Starbucks and Amazon have made inroads, too. On the other hand, the percentage of workers in the private sector who are union members has dropped from about 30 percent to about 7 percent. Although public sector unionization, which began to grow rapidly in the early 1960s, remains relatively high at about 36 percent, these workers are facing a frontal assault from the Trump Administration.

As a recent report by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) points out, the public today has a very favorable view of unions and the majority of workers would like to be represented by a union. The EPI explains that “employers now routinely exploit weaknesses in U.S. labor law to legally and illegally defeat union organizing. . . . U.S. policy effectively denies workers a meaningful right to a union and collective bargaining.” In many states, anti-union laws inhibit organizing.

Praise for Labor’s Untold Story

In 2020, Jacobin published a short essay by Chris Townsend, a former UE staff member, entitled, “Why Workers Everywhere Should Read Labor’s Untold Story.” That same year, a similarly favorable essay by Matthew Cunnigham Cook appeared on the Intercept website: “Labor’s Untold Story: An Old Book is Getting a New Look.”

Other Labor History Works

Activists of the sixties and seventies entered the union movement and academia and influenced both. As a member of both academia and the labor movement, I participated in the successful strike of the Graduate Employees Organization at the University of Michigan in 1975. That union is still active today. We pro-union academics have produced hundreds of labor histories in the decades since the emergence of what was once called the new labor history.

Among recent works that grapple with both labor’s history and the contemporary challenges facing workers are:

Hamiton Nolan, The Hammer: Power, Inequality, and the Struggle for the Soul of Labor. (New York: Hachette Books, 2024).

Kim Kelly, Fight like Hell: The Untold History of American Labor (New York: Atria/One Signal Publishers, 2022).

Frank Emspak, Troublemaker: Saying No to Power (Frank Emspak, 2022).

Steven Greenhouse, Beaten Down, Worked Up: The Past, Present, and Future of American Labor (New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 2019).

Annelise Orleck and Liz Cooke. “We Are All Fast-Food Workers Now” : The Global Uprising against Poverty Wages (Boston: Beacon Press, 2018).

I am also looking forward to Kim Scipe’s Unions, Race, and Popular Democracy: Building a Progressive Labor Movement, which will be published next year.

The Crises We Face Today

Seven to eight million people were on the streets across the country on the second No Kings Day on October 18, 2025. We continue to face multiple crises at home and abroad: The continuation of the Gaza genocide and of the proxy war in Ukraine, the Trump Administration’s murderous attacks on Venezuela boats, the federal government shutdown and the firing of many federal workers, the attempt to destroy the food stamp program and to undermine health programs and health care, the use of the military in U.S. cities, ICE’s illegal seizure and deportation of vulnerable individuals, Trump’s attack on free speech and the constitution. The answer to these multiple assaults is the full-scale mobilization of the American people.

A few months ago, I wrote about Congressman Jim McGovern’s call for a general strike. Similar calls have come from Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and from Sara Nelson, international president of the Association of Flight Attendants. Labor’s Untold Story recounts the story of city-wide general strike in San Francisco in 1934. There have been other city-wide general strikes and industry-wide strikes throughout our history. For our own survival and that of our children and grandchildren, we must continue to protest every violation of the rights of the people and every assault on the people’s needs.

Sources

“Richard Boyer, 70, Biographer and New York Writer, Dies,” New York Times, August 9, 1973, 38.

Gary Cirelli, “Building the Absent Argument: The Impact of Anti-Communism on the Development of Marxist Historical Analysis within the Historical Profession of the United States, 1940-1960,” M.A. thesis, Bowling Green State University, 2010.

“Dr. Herbert Morais, Historian, Author,” New York Times, March 15, 1970, 88.

On My Eightieth Birthday: Remembering Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Martin Halpern — Fri, 08 Aug 2025 10:26:25 GMT

I was born on August 9, 1945, the day the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Nagasaki, Japan, three days after dropping an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Fear of nuclear war was widespread among children of my generation. There were air raid drills where we hid under our desks or crouched alongside the wall in the hall. There were debates about the construction of fallout shelters. Fallout from nuclear testing caused the radioactive element strontium 90 to appear in the milk supply, we were told. When I visited the Oceanside public library when I was twelve or so, I read the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. Each issue included a picture of a nuclear clock showing how close political and military tension was pushing us to midnight and the risks of a nuclear war, which the scientists viewed as unthinkable.

For my seventy-sixth birthday, my older daughter and her partner gave me a puzzle of the New York Times front page on the day of my birth. The three-line banner headline for the day read: “Soviet Declares War on Japan; Attacks Manchuria, Tokyo Says; Atom Bomb Loosed on Japan.” The importance of the Soviet Union joining in their allies’ war against Japan was rightly emphasized by the Times. Unfortunately, the alliance came apart soon after the end of the war and the cold war between two nuclear-armed powers shaped global and domestic politics for over forty years. Although several arms control agreements were reached between 1963 and 2010, in the last fifteen years, the cancellation and suspension of these agreements and increasing political and military tension has put the Bulletin’s clock closer than ever to midnight.

We grew up with the fear that the cold war could become a nuclear war and each of us had to decide what attitude to take to both the cold war and the nuclear danger. My parents shaped my attitudes, raised my brother and me to support unions, working people, and civil rights and to oppose the cold war and McCarthyism. When playing touch football and other games with three other boys when I was about twelve, we debated the U.S.-Soviet conflict. We usually played in a field near the Ocean Lea complex where the three of them lived. Touch football is a pretty easy, fun game to play when it’s two against two, at least when the four players are similar sizes, ages, and skill levels. We took breaks from throwing, running, and catching to debate politics, especially international affairs. In these discussions, I was critical of cold war confrontation and favored negotiations to reduce the dangers of nuclear war and achieve eventual nuclear disarmament.

My acute focus on the danger of nuclear war may stem in part from the accident of my birthday. I’ve been writing about the dangers presented by nuclear weapons for over sixty years. I hope the reader will forgive me for quoting some of my previous writings.

Cuban Missile Crisis and Nuclear Test Ban Treaty

When I was a senior in high school, I wrote some political essays for the Oceanside High School newspaper, Sider Press. I wrote an essay about the nuclear danger just before the Cuban missile crisis erupted. I commented:

“On a recent television program, Howard K. Smith made the extraordinary statement that President Kennedy was experiencing a decline in popularity because there was no great crisis for him to overcome. Mr. Smith overlooked one extremely important crisis – that of the threatened nuclear holocaust.

“If President Kennedy were to effect a decrease in world tension during the next two years, he would undoubtedly be returned to office. The stage would then be set for the President to work toward a successful disarmament agreement during the next four years. If the President accomplished this task, he would become one of the most popular Presidents in the nation’s history.”

The essay went on to recommend cultural exchanges and a compromise to achieve an end to nuclear testing. “What we need most is for both sides to make a sincere effort to bring about a decrease in world tension. President Kennedy and Premier Khrushchev should acknowledge the fact that nuclear war would result in the destruction of mankind. There would be no winner in the event of a nuclear catastrophe.” Before my essay appeared in print, cold war tensions and the danger of nuclear war reached a peak with the Cuban missile crisis. Eight months after the confrontation over Cuba was resolved by diplomacy, the U.S. and the Soviet Union agreed on the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.

I explored the significance of the events of 1962 and 1963 in an essay published in the Japan Times in 1999:

“. . . the experience of the missile crisis led Kennedy to move away from seeing foreign policy as a tough competitive game. He came to appreciate the human stakes involved. He was, after all, a parent of young children as well as a president.

“In a speech at American University on June 10, 1963, Kennedy indicated the changes in his thinking. He said that the U.S. should seek a ‘genuine peace’ so that nations can “build a better life for their children” rather than a ‘Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war.’

“Casting a critical eye on cold war attitudes, Kennedy sought to ‘make the world safe for diversity.’ He stressed that ‘we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal.’”[1]

Members of Massachusetts Peace Action, an organization to which I belong have also been highlighting Kennedy’s American University speech.[2] It’s possible for individuals and presidents to think anew and it’s dearly needed at a time of the genocide in Gaza and the ongoing and dangerous war in Ukraine.

Ronald Reagan, the Nuclear Freeze Movement, and the INF Treaty

Shortly after he was inaugurated president, I wrote to Ronald Reagan asking him to accept Leonid Brezhnev’s suggestion that they meet in a summit conference:

“I am very concerned about the escalation in anti-Soviet rhetoric that has characterized your first weeks in office. A return to 1950s rhetoric can only lead to increasing tensions between our country and the Soviet Union. Such tensions can bring us to the brink of nuclear war again. And who knows if once at the brink, you will be able to stop from falling over into a nuclear holocaust that would destroy us all. . . . Are you afraid that if peace breaks out, you will find it more difficult to line the pockets of the defense contractors with still more billions of taxpayers’ dollars? Whatever your . . . fears, I believe you should fear nuclear war more. The overwhelming desire of the peoples of the world is to see an end to the nuclear arms race which threatens us all.”[3]

Reagan’s initial aggressive posture led to the development of a massive nuclear freeze movement in the U.S. and a movement in Europe against accepting new U.S. intermediate range nuclear weapons. I was among over one million people in New York City on June 12 ,1982, demanding that all sides add no new weapons to their nuclear arsenals. It was the nuclear freeze movement, which the Soviet Union supported, and the Reagan Administration attacked, that eventually led to a reversal in Reagan’s policy and the adoption of the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in 1987. Initiatives by a new Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, also played a part in Reagan’s change.

Japan and Peace

About a decade after Reagan left the White House, I was a Fulbright scholar at Tohoku University in Japan. When I arrived in Japan, I mentioned at the initial Fulbright scholar gathering my birth date, my opposition to nuclear weapons, and my experience as part of a generation involved in peace and civil rights activism. Two others around the table, Lois Helmbold, a historian who became a close friend, and Sam Sheppard, the director of the Fulbright program in Japan, mentioned they were also born in 1945. In interviews I’ve conducted with members of my birth cohort, it seemed clear that most of us were influenced by Kennedy’s idea that “the world is very different now.” As San Antonio playwright Sterling Houston put it in my interview with him: “Coming of age in the sixties when there was this ferment [and] the possibilities of change and all this stuff was happening. . . It seemed like it really could happen . . . we really could make it better.”[4]

The most memorable experience of my stay in Japan was the visit my younger daughter Leah and I took to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum and the Children’s Peace Monument in Peace Memorial Park. We were already aware of the story of Sadako Sasaki and the folding of paper cranes. Seeing the exhibits in the museum, the monuments, the film Hiroshima: A Mother’s Prayer, and the thousands of cranes in the park brought both of us to tears.[5]

In an essay published in the Japan Times after I returned home, I commented on the impact of the visit to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum and my concern that Japan was sending 600 soldiers to join the U.S. occupation of Iraq. I mentioned my fear that the government of Japan was undermining the country’s peace constitution. The New York Times article on Japan’s military mission emphasized that the U.S. “imposed” the peace constitution on Japan, but I pointed out the Times failed to note “the strong desire of the Japanese people after the war to break with the militarism and aggression that had brought enormous harm and suffering to Japan’s neighbors and disaster to Japan itself.” I added that “I learned from my time in Japan that strong sentiments for peace and opposition against nuclear arms persist to this day.”

I learned a great deal from the peace museum’s “documentation of the many times my government has threatened to use nuclear weapons and of the continuing advocacy of nuclear disarmament by the citizens and leaders of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.” I argued, that “at a time when a neoconservative clique seeking world hegemony plays a leading role in U.S. foreign policy formation, . . . Japan’s antinuclear advocacy is needed now more than ever.”

Anti-Nuclear Weapons Advocacy Today

Commemorations of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are taking place throughout the world this week. On August 6, 2025, United Nations Under-Secretary-General Izumi Nakamitsu issued a statement to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial on behalf of United Nations Secretary General António Guterres:

“. . . today the risk of nuclear conflict is growing. Trust is eroding. Geopolitical divisions are widening. And the very weapons that brought such devastation to Hiroshima and Nagasaki are once again being treated as tools of coercion.

“Yet, there are signs of hope.

“Last year, the Japanese organization Nihon Hidankyo — which represents the survivors of the Nagasaki and Hiroshima bombings — was awarded the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize for its tireless work in raising awareness about this critical issue.”[6]

We must focus our attention on the genocide in Gaza and the “escalating violence” and “forced displacement” in the West Bank,[7] the continuing war in Ukraine, and the humanitarian crisis in Sudan. With the danger of nuclear war, greater than ever, we need a renewed grass roots movement to support the eradication of nuclear weapons from the planet.

Nuclear arms agreements among the nuclear powers are nearly defunct. The people who live in the nuclear armed states need to pressure their governments to eliminate their nuclear stockpiles and instead pursue diplomacy with all the other nations of the world rather than nuclear intimidation. The United Nations notes that September 26 “The International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons has been observed annually since 2014.” The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons adopted by the United Nations entered into force on January 22, 2021. We the people of the states possessing nuclear weapons must do all in our power to persuade our governments to ratify the treaty and implement its provisions that will lead to a world without nuclear weapons. The survival of humanity is at stake.

NOTES

[1]. Martin Halpern, “Advice from the Past about Yugoslavia.” Published in the Japan Times, May 30, 1999, and distributed in revised form by the History News Service, June 16, 1999. The latter version is reproduced in Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective, June,1999.

[2]. See for example, “JFK’s Trailblazing Speech and Current Day Implications,” December 15, 2022, Massachusetts Peace Action.

[3]. Published also in a letter to the Daily World entitled “Nuclear Danger,” March 7, 1981.

[4]. Interview of Sterling Houston, June 9, 2003.

[5]. Hiroshima Hahatachi no inori [Hiroshima: A Mother’s Prayer], Motoo Ogasawara, director, Nihon Eiga Shin Sha, producer; Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, 1990.

[6]. The UN statement concludes: “And in the Pact for the Future, adopted last year, countries re-committed to a world free of nuclear weapons.” The Pact for the Future, adopted in 2024, covers a broad range of issues, “peace and security, sustainable development, climate change, digital cooperation, human rights, gender, youth and future generations, and the transformation of global governance.” However, the pact is not a legally binding document. While politically important, the pact is not something around which a grass roots movement is likely to develop.

[7]. B’Tselem – The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, Our Genocide, July 2025.

Three Ongoing Catastrophes:

Martin Halpern — Fri, 06 Jun 2025 12:49:56 GMT

Our heads spin every day that we pay attention to the news as on disaster after another unfolds before us. We in the United States are involved with three ongoing catastrophes, the genocide in Gaza; the assault on immigrants, free speech, and the constitutional system by President Donald Trump; and the threat that the escalation of the war in Ukraine will lead to nuclear war. We ignore any of these crises at our peril; we must do all we can to force the Trump Administration, the U.S. Congress, the courts, our state and local governments to end these catastrophes.

The Genocide in Gaza

Demonstrations against the genocide in Gaza have been taking place around the world. Millions of people are participating. Although the mainstream media in the U.S. give limited coverage to these protests, one can see enormous protests in country after country on social media.

On March 29, 2025, pro-Palestinian protests took place in 80 Spanish cities and more than 50,000 protested in Madrid on May 10, 2025. Eight days later, over 100,000 protested the genocide in The Hague, Netherlands. Protests take place in Canada, Mexico, South Africa, Senegal, Australia, Japan, Bangladesh, and many other countries. In the U.S., pro-Palestinian demonstrations have taken place on numerous campuses and in rural areas, small towns, and large cities. Groups like Jewish Voices for Peace and the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights play a prominent role in the demonstrations.

The U.S. has usually backed Israel because of the influence of the pro-Israel lobby, the profit-making of the military-industrial-intelligence complex, and because the foreign policy elite has seen Israel as a strategic asset against Arab nationalism and adversaries in the Middle East and elsewhere.

Some argue that it is impossible to change U.S. policy toward Israel and Palestine. However, there have been instances in the past when the U.S. has put effective pressure on Israel. The most obvious example is President Dwight Eisenhower forcing Britian, France, and Israel to end their occupation of Egypt in 1956.

There are more recent examples of the U.S. putting pressure on Israel. In 1991, President George H.W. Bush withheld loan guarantees from Israel until he received assurances that U.S. funds would not be used for illegal settlements on Palestinian land. “Bush established consequences for bad behavior, and he got results,” said James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute. “It can happen again.”[1]

Prior to entering the White House, Trump, through his emissary, Steve Witkoff, pressured Israel into agreeing to a Gaza ceasefire. When Israel refused to move toward ending the war with Hamas and broke the ceasefire, Trump failed to insist that Israel keep to the agreement.

The genocide in Gaza is not in the interests of the U.S. public. We must increase pressure on the Trump Administration to force it to act to end the genocide.

The Danger of Nuclear War

In 1947, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists highlighted the dangers of nuclear weapons and published what became known as “The Doomsday Clock” to illustrate how close the world was to a nuclear war catastrophe. It set the clock at 7 minutes to midnight. After moving ten minutes further away from midnight in 1991, the Bulletin has perceived ever greater danger in the last few years. It includes the risks from climate change, “emerging and re-emerging diseases,” and disruptive technologies such as artificial intelligence. On January 25, 2025, the Doomsday Clock was moved to 89 seconds to midnight, one second closer than the 90 seconds mark reached in 2023. The magazine’s Science and Security Board commented:

“In setting the Clock one second closer to midnight, we send a stark signal: Because the world is already perilously close to the precipice, a move of even a single second should be taken as an indication of extreme danger and an unmistakable warning that every second of delay in reversing course increases the probability of global disaster.”

The Ukrainian attack on planes of the Russian nuclear arsenal was shocking not only because of the serious damage to a major nuclear power’s arsenal, but because of the risks posed by this dangerous escalation. In 2022, UN Secretary General António Guterres worried that “humanity is just one misunderstanding, one miscalculation away from nuclear annihilation.”

The Russian planes were in plain view of satellites and were open for inspections because of requirements of nuclear arms control treaties. Although the U.S. withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002 and from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in 2019, two treaties are still in effect. They are the 1963 Partial Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty and 2011 New START Treaty.

Imagine, for a moment, what the U.S. might have done if an adversary attacked a part of our nuclear arsenal? In the U.S., only the president can decide to launch nuclear weapons. According to Annie Jacobson’s recent work, Nuclear War: A Scenario, the president would have only six minutes to make a decision.[2]

The Nuclear Arms Race and Nuclear Arms Control Efforts

The nuclear weapons age began on August 6, 1945, with the dropping by the United States of an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, visiting vast destruction on the city and its inhabitants. Three days later, the U.S. dropped a second bomb on the Japanese city of Nagasaki with similar horrible results. The United Nations had been founded just a few months earlier with the hope of avoiding another world war and creating a peaceful world order. Would those hopes or warfare prevail in the post-World War II world?

Discussions took place in the UN and elsewhere about banning the production, distribution, and use of nuclear weapons, but no agreement was reached. Initially, the U.S. had a monopoly and expected that building up a nuclear weapons arsenal would be in its interest. In 1947 the Soviet Union acquired nuclear weapons, and a nuclear arms race ensued. The United Kingdom acquired nuclear weapons in 1952, France in 1960, and China in 1964.

Although the five permanent members of the UN Security Council were the first to acquire nuclear weapons, India, Pakistan, North Korea, and Israel also established nuclear weapons programs. The South African apartheid state dismantled its nuclear weapons before the African National Congress took power in 1994. Three former Soviet republics, including Ukraine, turned their nuclear weapons over to Russia.

Although most of the nuclear states have ratified the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), they have all violated their obligations under the treaty, which include: “Each of the Parties to the Treaty undertakes to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.”

Dissatisfied with the lack of progress toward nuclear disarmament, most non-nuclear states have ratified The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). The UN General Assembly adopted the latter treaty in 2017, and it came into force in 2021. The TPNW puts teeth in the NPT’s general obligation by requiring signatories to conduct an “irreversible elimination” of their nuclear weapons arsenals. A revitalization of the internationalist movement against nuclear weapons can put pressure on the nuclear powers to join the treaty.

Trump’s Assaults on Democracy and the No Kings Protest, June 14, 2025

The Trump Administration’s attacks on the rights of federal employees, immigrants, pro-Palestinian protestors, federal regulatory agencies, universities, unions, Medicaid recipients, and many others are ongoing. The administration also seeks to undermine the power of Congress and the courts, Fundamentally, Trump seeks one-person rule and an end to the constitutional order.

His military parade on June 14 is an attempt to intimidate all opposition. It’s as if he were saying, “you see I have the military in my pocket; oppose me and martial law is next.”

The answer of the resistance is to organize massive protests throughout the country on June 14.

The organizers declare:

“In America, we don’t put up with would-be kings. NO KINGS is a national day of action and mass mobilization in response to increasing authoritarian excesses and corruption from Trump and his allies. We’ve watched as they’ve cracked down on free speech, detained people for their political views, threatened to deport American citizens, and defied the courts. They’ve done this all while continuing to serve and enrich their billionaire allies.

“On Saturday, June 14, we’re taking to the streets nationwide. We’re not gathering to feed his ego. We’re building a movement that leaves him behind.

“The flag doesn’t belong to Donald Trump. It belongs to us. We’re not watching history happen. We’re making it.

“On June 14th, we’re showing up everywhere he isn’t—to say no thrones, no crowns, no kings. Check out nokings.org for more information.”

When you march against Trump’s authoritarianism, demand also an end to the genocide in Gaza, and action to end the danger of nuclear war.

Notes

[1]. Daniel Marans, “George H.W. Bush’s Pressure On Israel Provides Model For Progressives,” Huffington Post, May 25, 2021. < https://www.huffpost.com/entry/george-hw-bush-israel-palestinians-progressives_n_60a6d388e4b0a25683107530> accessed June 5, 2025.

[2]. Jon Letman, “No Time for Nuclear War,” Inkstick, June 5, 2025. < https://inkstickmedia.com/no-time-for-nuclear-war/> accessed June 5, 2025; Annie Jacobson, Nuclear War: A Scenario (New York, Dutton, 2024).

https://depts.washington.edu/labhist/strike/quast.shtml

McGovern Calls for a General Strike

Martin Halpern — Mon, 24 Mar 2025 15:48:05 GMT

McGovern Calls for a General Strike

Jim McGovern, U.S. representative from western Massachusetts – and my congressman – has spoken at town meetings and called for a general strike. At a March 15 music festival billed as a day of “peace, love, and protest,” McGovern declared that “if there’s a constitutional crisis” where Trump ignores court decisions “we may need a general strike that tells them ‘enough is enough.’ . . . . If he wants to fight, we’ll give him a goddamned fight.”[1]

At a Greenfield town meeting organized by Franklin County Continuing the Political Revolution on March 18, there were “resounding cheers” from the 750 constituents attending the gathering when McGovern declared it was time to “start thinking about outside-the-box ideas like a general strike.” When someone in the audience stated that a general strike was being organized on social media, McGovern remarked there was a need for “much more planning” and “the participation of the unions.”[2]

The UAW General Strike Plan

At the conclusion of a series of short strikes in 2023, UAW President Shawn Fain called for the auto union and other unions to plan for a general strike on May 1, 2028. Fain commented: “We have to pay for our sins of the past. Back in 1980 when Reagan at the time fired patco workers, everybody in this country should have stood up and walked the hell out,” Fain said. “We missed the opportunity then, but we’re not going to miss it in 2028. That’s the plan. We want a general strike. We want everybody walking out just like they do in other countries.”

Will the UAW recognize the nature of the moment and move up its plan for strike action?

The Growing Resistance

Describing the “slow erosion of rights and norms” taking place, McGovern warned that “This is the break the glass moment.” Supporting resistance and civil disobedience, McGovern noted his participation in a Worcester rapid response network in defense of immigrants threatened by ICE raids.[3]

Large crowds have greeted Senator Bernie and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as they take their “Fighting Oligarchy Tour” across the country. Unions of postal workers and other federal workers have been holding demonstrations and mobilizing their members to fight back. Demonstrators have called for boycotting Tesla and other companies supporting Trump’s attack on democracy.

Friends tell me about seeing anti-Trump protesters on the interstate overpasses, and demonstrations to support farmers having their livelihood threatened by Trump. A giant mobilization for an April 5 protest in Boston will draw people from throughout the state.

McGovern is right that a strike needs to be planned. Strike action allows workers to unite and put pressure on employers. A general strike allows workers – and their supporters – to effectively challenge those who rule and oppress us.

A general strike today would allow working people and their allies to fight back against the attempt of the Trump Administration to destroy the right to free speech and free assembly, the rights of federal and other workers, and social and regulatory programs that help the poor, consumers, and the environment. It is perhaps our strongest weapon.

Who is Jim McGovern?

When in junior high in Worcester, Massachusetts, McGovern began campaigning for Senator George McGovern (no relation) for president. He later served on the senator’s staff. As a congressional staffer, McGovern “led an investigation into the murders of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her daughter in El Salvador.” He uncovered U.S. involvement in the training of Salvadoran soldiers and advocated cutting off funding for the School of the Americas.

Elected to the House of Representatives in 1996, McGovern has focused on hunger, human rights, and peace as well as measures to assist his constituents. In 2016, Massachusetts Peace Action (MPA) gave McGovern its Peace Builders Award. However, McGovern has not joined in MPA’s calls to end the Ukraine War. We’ve demonstrated outside his office on several occasions since the war began, most recently on the third anniversary of the start of the war.

McGovern on Ethel Rosenberg and the Threat to Democracy Today

McGovern recently joined Michael and Robert Meeropol, the sons of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, in calling for the exoneration of Ethel Rosenberg. McGovern declared on the House floor:

“. . . let the congressional record show, and every person in this building know, the U.S. government knew that Ethel Rosenberg was innocent. We knew that she was not a spy, and we executed her anyway. And I find that to be a disgrace, and I want to apologize for the pain and grief her family suffered because of what happened. Ethel was put to death during the height of McCarthyism, a time of hysteria when due process was cast aside. She was put to death at a time when due process was not guaranteed and our democratic values were not always upheld. We let fear and anger and hate get the best of us.

“We are currently living through an equally troubling time in our country. People are being targeted and attacked for the way they think, what they say, and who they are. Facts must still matter, Mr. Speaker. Let's learn from our unperfect history.”

Past Big Strikes

Although we have not had a countrywide general strike in the U.S., we have had some significant strike movements in the U.S.

In August 1997, 185,000 United Parcel Service workers represented by the Teamsters Union went on a 15-day strike against the company. With the public siding with the workers, the union won 10,0000 new full-time jobs, significant increases in wages and pensions, and a reduction in sub-contracting.

In March 1970, although they lacked the legal right to strike, postal workers in New York City began a strike that soon included over 200,000 postal workers across the country. They won a 14 percent wage increase, the right to collective bargaining, and inclusion under the National Labor Relations Act.[4]

On October 15, 1969, several million people stopped their usual activities and joined together in the Vietnam Moratorium to protest the continuation of that unjust war. Starting with a base of support among college student leaders, the Vietnam Moratorium Committee and the New Mobilization Committee Against the War in Vietnam spent two months organizing at the local and national levels and gained the endorsement of the United Auto Workers, the Teamsters Union, the New Democratic Coalition, the Ripon Society, Americans for Democratic Action, the Central Conference of American Rabbis, and twenty-four Democratic Senators.[5] At the University of Michigan, where I was a graduate student, the campus shut down for the day and over 30,000 gathered in the football stadium for a peace rally.

In 1959, 500,000 steel workers conducted a successful 116 strike to prevent the company from removing a contract clause that protected them from management’s unilaterally changing work rules to eliminate jobs and intensify work.

In 1946, over 1.6 million steel, electrical, and packinghouse workers struck together and won substantial wage increases. Prior to the steel union joining the strike action by the left-wing United Electrical Workers, steel industry management rejected a compromise proposed by President Truman. Steel Workers Union President Philip Murray commented that big business was involved in an “evil conspiracy . . . to exact unconditional surrender of the American people and the United States government . . . [they] have deliberately set out to provoke strikes and economic chaos, and hijack the American people through uncontrolled profits and inflation.”[6]

Community General Strikes

On November 2, 2011, thousands involved in the Occupy movement that began with Occupy Wall Street and spread across the world, shut down the Oakland, California port as part of an Oakland General Strike. They protested the domination of the 1 percent and growing inequality.

A feature of the 1946 strike wave included some community general strikes. In Rochester, New York, as many as 50,000 workers conducted a one-day general strike that won a return to work of fired city workers and recognition of their union. In Oakland, California, a three-day general strike of 100,000 supported striking retail workers, who won union recognition a few months after the strike’s end. There were also community general strikes that year in Lancaster and Pittsburgh, PA, in Stamford, CT, and in Houston.[7]

The most famous U.S. general strike is the San Francisco General Strike of 1934. Following the police killing of two workers during the coastwide longshore workers strike, unions began a general strike which eventually included 150,000 workers. Weakened by conservative union leaders, the general strike lasted four days and led to an agreement to arbitrate the dispute. Workers returning to the job “continued job actions to protect strike leaders and rid the docks of scabs” and pushed “beyond the significant concessions in an arbitration award to gain sole control of the hiring hall and end the power of management to intimidate workers.”[8]

Perhaps the most instructive community general strike to study for the crisis we face today is the Seattle General Strike of 1919. Sixty thousand workers struck the city for four days to back striking shipyard workers. A contributing factor in the move to the general strike was the campaign to free Tom Mooney, a union leader convicted on perjured testimony of a bombing at the 1916 San Francisco Preparedness Day parade. The U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear Mooney’s appeal as he sat on death row awaiting execution. “The urgency of the Mooney campaign, and the overarching themes of working class solidarity, internationalism, personal liberty and simple fairness that infused the Mooney fight, flowed seamlessly into the January dispute in the Seattle shipyards that triggered the general strike.”[9] Mooney’s sentence was commuted but he wasn’t freed until 1939.

Key Demands Today

As grass roots organizing for a general strike develops, local and national groups will weigh in on the key demands of the action. Here are some suggestions.

Freedom for Mahmoud Khalil and All Those Unjustly Detained

The arrest of Khalil, a Columbia University student leader of the campaign for Palestinian rights and against the Israeli genocide in Gaza, is a central act in the campaign of the Trump Administration to suppress freedom of speech and assembly by supporters of Palestinian rights. Trump has continued and expanded the Biden Administration’s attacks on academic freedom and freedom of speech and assembly of Israel’s critics, falsely labelling such criticism as anti-Semitism.

As Khalil has pointed out in an open letter, the Columbia University Administration is complicit in the campaign against academic freedom, expelling Grant Miner, president of the Student Workers of Columbia-United Auto Workers, UAW on the eve of negotiations.

“Trade unionists everywhere, defenders of the Constitution, of freedom of speech, of academic freedom, and of the right of free association, should be appalled and disgusted by the behavior of Columbia University, and should take it for the clear signal it is,” the UAW wrote. “If they can come for graduate workers, if they can arrest, deport, expel, or imprison union leaders and activists for their protected political speech, then they can come for you. For your contract. For your paycheck. For your family. And for your rights.”

Activists on campus are among a large group of people unjustly detained. Khalil described this reality from his cell in Louisiana: “Who has the right to have rights? It is certainly not the humans crowded into the cells here. It isn’t the Senegalese man I met who has been deprived of his liberty for a year, his legal situation in limbo and his family an ocean away. It isn’t the 21-year-old detainee I met, who stepped foot in this country at age nine, only to be deported without so much as a hearing.”

Khalil and all those unjustly detained must be freed.

Return the Fired Federal Workers to Their Jobs

According to US News and World Report, “more than 200,000 federal workers have reportedly been fired or had roles eliminated since early 2025, with an additional 75,000 government employees accepting buyouts.” Russell Vought , director of the Office of Management and Budget, designed the rapid and often illegal terminations to destroy federal workers’ mental well-being: “We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected … “we want to put them in trauma,” he told a conservative think tank. Let’s turn our anger at this brutality into activism on federal workers’ behalf,

Restore the Gutted Federal Agencies and Departments of Government

Departments and agencies shredded by the Trump Administration need to be restored. These include the Department of Education, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the National Park Service, the National Institutes of Health, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, and many more.

Restore Terminated Grant Funding Appropriated by Congress

At the town meeting in Greenfield with McGovern, executive director Rebecca Todd of the Connecticut River Conservancy pointed out that the freezing of $13 million in grants to the conservancy hurts efforts to preserve and protect the environment “and the great people who rely on the river.”[10]

Fire Musk and Close Down DOGE

Elon Musk may have bought his access to Donald Trump, but he was not elected and has not been confirmed by the U.S. Senate. DOGE has not been established as a department or agency of the federal government by the Congress. The damage that Musk and Doge have wrought is enormous. They must go.

Stop Funding Israel’s Genocide and Support Palestinian Rights

Although Trump brokered a ceasefire in Gaza as he was about to begin his second term, he has reversed course and has given the green light to renewed genocidal attacks and ethnic cleansing. The U.S. needs to stop weapons deliveries and end military assistance to Israel. We for the Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in the Gaza Strip (South Africa v. Israel).

The U.S. should follow the lead of 146 United Nations member states and recognize Palestinian statehood.

End the Ukraine War

Although Trump did not end the Ukraine War before he became president, as he had promised, he has begun negotiations to end the conflict. A continuation of the war is in no one’s interest. Achieving a quick end to the war and beginning a normal diplomatic relationship with Russia would be important steps in ending the forever wars of the last quarter century.

Cut Military Spending in Half

The U.S. leads the world in military spending. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the U.S. spends three times what China spends, nearly nine times what Russia spends, and more than the other top ten spenders combined. Its expenditures on its military are 37 percent of the world total.[11] The U.S. has military bases in 750 countries. According to NATO, the U.S. spends $2,200 per capita on “defense.”

On February 13, 2025, Donald Trump spoke with reporters in the Oval Office about his hopes to reduce nuclear weapons spending and overall military spending. “There’s no reason for us to be building brand new nuclear weapons, we already have so many,” Trump said. “You could destroy the world 50 times over, 100 times over. And here we are building new nuclear weapons, and they’re building nuclear weapons.”

“We’re all spending a lot of money that we could be spending on other things that are actually, hopefully much more productive support rather than oppose South Africa’s case against Israel in the International Court of Justice,”

Trump declared that if states use nuclear weapons, “that’s going to be probably oblivion.”

He added: “One of the first meetings I want to have is with President Xi of China, President Putin of Russia. And I want to say, ‘let’s cut our military budget in half.’ And we can do that. And I think we’ll be able to.”

Unfortunately, Trump has not followed through on these ideas. While Trump gives “lip service to denuclearization,” Mike Merryman-Lotze of the American Friends Service Committee points out, “the changes demanded by [Defense Secretary] Hegseth and supported by Trump explicitly exclude cuts to ongoing upgrades to U.S. nuclear weapons systems.”

We need a vast outpouring for peace ad against nuclear weapons on the scale of the nuclear freeze movement of the early 1980s.

Tax the Rich

The rapid growth of wealth at the top and inequality in the U.S. has led to calls to increase taxes on billionaires, on corporate profits, and on the wealthy in general.

Senator Bernie Sanders’ website describes the situation and the benefits of his proposal to tax only a small group of the super-rich: “Over the last 30 years, the top 1 percent has seen a $21 trillion increase in its wealth, while the bottom half of American society has actually lost $900 billion in wealth. In other words, there has been a massive transfer of wealth from those who have too little to those who have too much. For the sake of our democracy and working families all over America who are struggling economically, that has got to change.

“. . . the time has come for the United States to establish an annual tax on the extreme wealth of the top 0.1 percent of U.S. households.

“This wealth tax would only apply to net worth of over $32 million and would raise an estimated $4.35 trillion over the next decade. Anyone who has a net worth of less than $32 million would not see their taxes go up at all under this plan.

“The revenue raised under this plan would be used to fund Bernie’s affordable housing plan, universal childcare and would help fund Medicare for All.”

Conclusion

Struggles to defend the interests of working people and to maintain and expand democratic rights have been going on throughout our history. We can draw strength from knowledge of that history. That is why the far right has been attacking libraries, books, critical race theory, and civil rights, African American, and women’s history. The fight to protect academic freedom, and libraries must go hand in hand with the fight to protect freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion, the right to vote., and the integrity of our legal system.

We must save ourselves. Only grass roots action in every form and by every means will enable us to end the depredations of Trump and his allies. Talk to your neighbors, your friends, your family, members of your unions and associations. It will take the mobilization of both existing organizations and new groups to launch and sustain a general strike and force the Trump Administration to abandon its attempt to destroy democracy and the constitutional order. At stake are the interests of poor and working people and of all those who value fairness, caring for one’s neighbor, and the democratic system.

NOTES

[1]. Ben Gangon, “McGovern Also Headlined Day of ‘Peace, Love, and Protest,” Montague Reporter, March 20, 2025, A1, A6.

[2]. Mike Jackson, “’We Need to Start Thinking About’ General Strike, Says Congressman,” Montague Reporter, March 20, 2025, A1, A4.

[3]. Ibid.

[4]. Martin Halpern, Unions, Radicals and Democratic Presidents: Seeking Social Change in the Twentieth Century (Greenwood Press, 2003), 105-6.

[5]. Charles DeBenedetti and Charles Chatfield, An American Ordeal: The Antiwar Movement of the Vietnam Era (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1990), 249-253.

[6]. Martin Halpern UAW Politics in the Cold War Era (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1988), 75.

[7] . Kim Moody, “A General Strike in the Heartland?” Labor Notes, March 18, 2011. https://labornotes.org/2011/03/general-strike-heartland

[8]. Chris Carlsson, “The General Strike of 1934: Historical Essay, The San Francisco Digital History Archive. https://www.foundsf.org/index.php?title=The_General_Strike_of_1934, accesed March 23, 2025; Martin Halpern, “Labor,” in William Pederson, The Blackwell Companion to Franklin D. Roosevelt (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2011).

[9]. Stan Quast, “How the fight to free Tom Mooney fueled the nation’s first general strike.” Seattle General Strike Project,

[10]. Mike Jackson, “’We Need to Start Thinking About’ General Strike, Says Congressman,” Montague Reporter, March 20, 2025, A1, A4.

[11]. Nan Tian, Diego Lopes da Silva, xiao Liang and Lorenzo Scarazzato, “Trends In World Military Expenditure, 2023. SIPRI Fact Sheet, April 2024. https://www.sipri.org/sites/default/files/2024-04/2404_fs_milex_2023.pd

Trump’s Nixon Moment: How Will It End?

Martin Halpern — Thu, 13 Feb 2025 14:40:51 GMT

In embarking on his second term, Donald Trump’s position is like that of Richard Nixon in 1969. A significant factor in both candidates’ victories was public dissatisfaction with unpopular wars and with Democratic presidents’ conduct of foreign policy. In 1968, it was particularly Democratic voters who were unhappy with the continuation of the Vietnam War. In 2024 it was particularly Democratic voters who were distressed by United States support and funding of the Israeli genocide in Gaza.

Improved relations with the Soviet Union begun by President John Kennedy and continued by President Lyndon Johnson had stalled by 1968 because of the Vietnam War. In 2024, Republican voters and many Republican office holders were opposed to continuing to fund the proxy war in Ukraine against Russia.

Will Trump follow Nixon’s path in addressing these similar foreign policy controversies? Although Nixon claimed during the presidential campaign that he had a secret plan to end the Vietnam War, he continued the war for another four- and one-half years and faced even larger protest demonstrations than Johnson had.

Nixon did achieve a breakthrough toward détente with the Soviet Union with the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. His visit to China and attempt to use China against the Soviet Uni as well as events like the U.S.-supported overthrow of the government of Salvador Allende in Chile were indications that Nixon was playing a power politics game.

The need for a radical shift in our foreign policy is even greater today than it was during Nixon’s time in office. We must move away from seeking U.S. hegemony. We must recognize that we live in a multi-polar world and work with others to address climate change and rid the world of nuclear weapons.

Comparing Trump and Nixon

Richard Nixon and Donald Trump had contrasting backgrounds. Nixon’s parents struggled financially while Trump’s family was wealthy. However, the fathers of both men were brutal and both presidents likely experienced childhood trauma. Experts have characterized both as narcissists. Nixon practiced negative campaigning, and Trump took that style to a new level. Given their hunger for power and the distorted thinking that comes with narcissism, one witnesses surprising twists and turns in their careers.

Nixon was a Republican all his life while Trump went back and forth between the Democrats, the Republicans, and the Reform Party of Ross Perot. Trump drew from Perot the anti-Mexico bias and the emphasis on rebuilding U.S. manufacturing.

Trump’s First Term Failures

During his first campaign for the presidency, Trump stated, “At some point, we can’t be the policeman of the world. We have to rebuild our own country.” He “denounced the Iraq war. . . . rejected repudiating the Obama Administration’ Iran deal” and said the U.S. should be “neutral” in the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. The neocons sharply opposed him.[1] Most importantly, Trump advocated working with Russia and Russian President Vladimir Putin instead of continuing a renewed cold war against Russia. Trump talked of meeting with Putin prior to assuming office, stating, “I think it would be wonderful.”[2]

Trump’s foreign policy during his first term diverged sharply from his campaign ideas. The opposition to the idea of a new détente with Russia was particularly vehement. Trump reversed course. He withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action with Iran, the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty with Russia, and the multi-lateral Paris Climate Agreement and Open Skies Treaty.

Trump’s Second Term

Trump has made clear this time around that he will follow Nixon’s animus toward those he perceives as his “enemies.” He also appears to have no qualms about tearing up the Constitution and allowing Elon Musk to run roughshod over the federal government and its employees.

On foreign policy, the pre-inauguration period and the first weeks of the second Trump Administration have provided mixed signals. Before assuming office this time, Trump put pressure on the Israeli government to agree to a ceasefire in Gaza. In the last week or two, however, Trump has made comments about the U.S. taking over Gaza and, on February 10, 2025, threatening that if all the hostages are not released by Saturday noon February 15, 2025, the ceasefire should be cancelled and "Let all hell break out; Israel can override it."

Jeffrey Sachs noted on February 11, that Trump’s comments on Gaza united the whole world against the United States. If the ceasefire breaks down, Sachs argues, the consequences for the Palestinians but also for the United States and the Trump Administration would be “devastating.”

The day after Sachs’ comments, Trump had a 90-minute conversation with President Putin of Russia. Trump stated: “We agreed to work together, very closely, including visiting each other’s Nations. We have also agreed to have our respective teams start negotiations immediately, and we will begin by calling President Zelenskyy, of Ukraine, to inform him of the conversation, something which I will be doing right now.”

A Peaceful Framework for U.S. Policy or Continued Support for Genocide?

Will Trump try to combine a turn toward peace with Russia with continued support for the Israeli genocide in Gaza to appear tough or will he recognize the inconsistency of such an approach and seek peace in both areas? There will be significant opposition by the foreign policy elite and the Democrats to ending the Ukraine War even though their alternative approach of turning the war into a long-term frozen conflict would be costly in both human and economic terms. The opposition to the genocide in Gaza was enormous under President Biden and would only become more widespread. The isolation of the U.S. would expand.

Trump has never shown a bit of sympathy toward the Palestinians so it’s hard to be optimistic. However, I think Sachs is right that becoming Genocide Donald would deeply and perhaps fatally wound Trump’s presidency. Moreover, if he follows through on his plans to attack his adversaries at home and further undermine the Constitution, a vast resistance movement will lead to crippling or ending his presidency. Given his temperament, Trump, like Nixon before him, would feel he was being persecuted. In reality, it is the Palestinian people, deprived of their fundamental human rights, their homes, their lives, and their right to self-determination who are being persecuted every day.

Conclusion

Progressives and human rights supporters should push back against the Trump Administration’s assaults on our rights. We must intensify our campaign of solidarity with the Palestinian people.

Notes

[1]. Jacob Heilbrunn, “The neocons vs. Donald Trump. New York Times, March 13, 2016, SR2.

[2]. David E. Sanger, “A hawkish role reversal. New York Times,” October 21, 2016, A1.

A Ceasefire at Last

Martin Halpern — Sat, 18 Jan 2025 16:11:46 GMT

On January 15, 2025, a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas was announced. It was fitting that the declaration came on the 96^th anniversary of the birth of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a fierce advocate of peace and justice, taken from us by violence before his fortieth birthday. The proclamation came as a welcome relief from a series of right-wing and anti-democratic developments in several countries that have occurred since the November U.S. election.

Increased right-wing Aggressiveness

Shortly after the election, the Biden Administration reversed its position and gave a green light to the use of U.S. missiles to attack Russia from within Ukraine. As Jeffrey Sachs pointed out at the time, Biden had earlier refused this step on the grounds that such an escalation increased the danger of nuclear war. Now, Sachs noted, Biden gave the go-ahead with no explanation provided to the U.S. public or anyone else.
On December 3, 2024, South Korea’s right-wing President Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law, charging the Democratic Party, which holds a majority in parliament, with collaborating with North Korean communists. The dictatorial bid failed, and the parliament impeached Yoon.
On December 8, 2024, the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a former Al Qaeda affiliate took power in Syra. Israel took advantage of this turn of events to engage in new military attacks on Syria. In a joint statement, the Communist parties of the Arab world condemned Israel “targeting dozens of military sites throughout the country, the incursion of its troops into the vicinity of the occupied Golan Heights, the violation of the 1974 ceasefire agreement, and the announcement of its intention to impose control over vast border areas.” They called on the United Nations to compel Israel “to implement the 1974 ceasefire agreement, stop its aggression against Syria and withdraw its invading forces immediately.”
In Romania, the Constitutional Court nullified the results of the presidential election before the final round of voting. The leading candidate, Călin Georgescu, is an independent who favors partial nationalization of some industries and non-intervention in the Ukraine War. The Constitutional Court first confirmed the results of the first round of voting and then reversed its position on the grounds that Russia had promoted Georgescu’s candidacy with an online campaign.
Pro-Western forces rejected the results of the October 26, 2024, parliamentary elections won again by the Georgia Dream party. The Dream Party Georgian government had refused Ukraine’s request that it open a second front against Russia. On December 14, 2024, the parliament elected a new president, Mikheil Kavelashvili, but the old president, Salome Zourabichvili, claimed that she was still president. She’s backed by the EU. Georgian officials face U.S. sanctions, and what appears to be a U.S. regime change operation.

The degree of U.S. involvement in these developments varies. The pattern suggests, however, that the Biden Administration has been intensifying its thus far unsuccessful campaign to weaken Russia before leaving office. On the other hand, the Biden Administration took two positive steps:

Positive Steps

On November 27, 2024, the U.S. and China agreed to a prisoner exchange and the U.S. lowered its warning to its citizens about the danger of travel to China.
On January 14, 2025, Biden informed Congress of his administration’s intent to take Cuba off the U.S. list of states sponsoring terrorism. During the 2020 campaign, Biden had said he would restore the Obama-era policy of engagement with Cuba. Progressive critics fault Biden for the delay in changing Cuba policy. Given Trump’s selection of Senator Marco Rubio, a hard-line opponent of the Cuban government, as secretary of state, it is unclear how long the new policy will last.

The Ceasefire Agreement

The Biden Administration is claiming credit for the most important post-election development, the Gaza ceasefire agreement, but the evidence suggests that it was pressure from Trump, coupled with the exhaustion of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) that finally forced Israel to agree to the ceasefire.

Trump reposted a video of economist and United Nations leader Jeffrey Sachs calling Benjamin Netanyahu a "deep, dark son of a bitch" who had gotten the U.S. involved in several wars over the past thirty years. Trump followed that action by sending an emissary, Steve Witkoff, to meet with mediators in Qatar and with Netanyahu. Al Jazeera reported that “Qatar’s Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani thanked Witkoff by name when announcing the deal.” Israeli newspapers have likewise been crediting Trump’s role as did Sachs.

In anticipation of the ceasefire proclamation, the Combatants for Peace (CfP), the Israeli-Palestinian peace group, sent out a message telling its supporters of the importance of the potential ceasefire. “The details are sketchy, people are used as pawns, and big decisions are set aside as usual with no one willing to accept the only reality there is - we must all learn to accept each other and rebuild Gaza, stop settler terrorism, and repair Israeli society from within.”

The day after the announcement, the CfP noted: “As Palestinians and Israelis, today is a day of mixed emotions and highly charged feelings. We all need to individually and collectively be allowed to feel what we need to in order to process this news, and to express ourselves as we choose.” At the same time, the CfP hopes this “will be the beginning of the end to the violence . . . [and] of a robust political process that will free Palestinians of the oppression of occupation, and allow Israelis to live securely.”

A ceasefire and the release of hostages is only a first step toward justice for the Palestinians, but no progress can happen without that first step. The breakthrough comes ten weeks after the U.S. elections and five days before the inauguration of Donald Trump as president. The period has been a time of uncertainty among progressives about how to respond to Trump’s victory.

Engagement and Resistance

Jeffrey Sachs’ recent interviews were an example of an at open-minded engagement with Trump, appealing to him to break with the failed policies of the military-industrial-intelligence complex.

Code Pink is known for taking on the war-makers and not backing down. It also made an appeal to Trump to reverse course. On December 30, 2024, Code Pink recalled a 2019 conversation between former President Jimmy Carter and then President Trump about China policy. “China has not wasted a single penny on war,” Carter said, “and that’s why they’re ahead of us, in almost every way.”

While Code Pink is disturbed by “his first-term track record; his second-term cabinet picks; and his aggressive rhetoric since the election,” it says “some of Trump’s statements during the election campaign suggest that he hasn’t forgotten Carter’s advice. At the very least, he got the message that peace would be good for America, and that a lot of Americans understand that.”

Code Pink concludes: “This is a test for the American people. Do we want a showman, tough guy president, playing ringmaster of the corporate media circus? Do we want a leader who threatens to invade Canada, Mexico, Panama (again) and Greenland, like an American Netanyahu dreaming of a Western Greater Israel? Or should we demand a president who really puts America First? A president who makes peace in Ukraine and the Middle East? A president who finally starts bringing our troops home from those 800 foreign military bases all over the world?”

Democracy and Peace

Should we emphasize resistance to Trump as a threat to the survival of democracy? Certainly, we must resist the president-elect’s promise to be a dictator on day one of a new term. We must recall his attempt to subvert the peaceful transfer of power in 2021 and his encouragement of the January 6, 2021, mob violence against Congress. The right-wing Supreme Court majority’s grant of immunity to Trump and the anti-democratic plans of the Trump-allied Project 2025 are among the threats with which we must contend.

Today, January 18, 2025, a People’s March is being held in big and small cities across the country to emphasize the determination of progressive movements to resist Trump’s right-wing agenda. This is a continuation of the resolve shown in the Women’s March of January 21, 2017. Among the issues being highlighted are reproductive rights, human rights, dignity, equality before the law, transparent and fair elections, immigrant rights, bodily autonomy, gender justice, peace, environmental justice, and reduction of military spending.

Issues related to peace are crucial. Ending the genocide in Gaza and the war in Ukraine are top priorities. Instead of continuing the forever wars against other countries and making threats and taking aggressive steps against Russia and China, we must return to diplomacy and to robust nuclear arms control measures.

The Communist Party of Israel and Hadash “see the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip as an urgent task and call on the world to bear this responsibility, and to prevent the right-wing government in Israel from using the remaining time to complete the implementation of the agreement to continue with genocidal crimes or to resume them after the completion of the prisoners exchange deal.”

I recognize the fragility of the agreement. There are reports that there is a side agreement between Trump and Netanyahu for the U.S. to back Israel when and if it chooses to invade Gaza again. Trump’s secretary of defense designee, Pete Hegseth, told the Senate, “I support Israel destroying and killing every last member of Hamas.”

Conclusion

Activists in the worldwide movement to end the genocide must remain engaged and continue to pressure for peace and justice for Palestinians. While we in the U.S. fight anti-democratic moves by the Trump Administration, we must continue as well our campaign to end the disastrous and failed endless wars to preserve U.S. hegemony. We must work with the United Nations and with other nations to shift away from war and threats of war to prioritizing the health, environmental, and educational needs of the world’s peoples.

“Turn a Defeat into a Barricade”

Martin Halpern — Sat, 16 Nov 2024 02:14:32 GMT

Today, November 15, is my dad’s birthday. He’s been gone for many years, but I think about him often. One of his sayings, “Turn a Defeat into a Barricade,” has stuck with me. I particularly return to it today in the wake of the election of Donald Trump despite the opposition of most women, union voters, people of color, Jewish people, liberals and moderates.

Ten days ago, I wrote an optimistic piece on the eve of the election expecting that we would be ready to start building a broad-based “popular front for peace, social justice, and working people’s needs.” There is an urgent need for radical changes in foreign and domestic policy. We will continue to push for such changes – and we will also need to resist attacks on our rights.

My dad provided me a model of both kindness and civic activism. He experienced plenty of ups and downs but remained a thoughtful and engaged citizen throughout his life.

A Union Leader

Eli Halpern was the key organizer of the Saks 34^th Street store in Manhattan, New York. He was working in the store as a shoe salesperson. He was the chair of a committee of ten shoe salespeople. Each of the ten organized a single department in the store, maintaining secrecy.

Secrecy was essential because even though they were protected under the NLRB, those volunteer organizers would lose income if they were fired and had to seek reinstatement and back pay under NLRB procedures.

My dad became president of Local 4 of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU). Local 4 won a first contract in October 1939. It later merged with Gimbels Local 2, and my dad became a full-time official of Local 2.

Although Samuel Wolchuck, the president of the RWDSU, was anti-communist, many of the union’s locals were led by Communists. The Gimbels local was particularly radical. A saying of the time was, “when the revolution starts, it will start in Gimbels basement.”

Family Background

Born to a Jewish family in Vilnius, Russia, in 1906, my dad came to the United States when he was about eleven years old, living initially in Savannah, Georgia, then in Chattanooga, Tennessee. He spoke Yiddish, German, and Russian as a child. He kept the Yiddish. Spending over a dozen years in the South, he developed a Southern accent. It was gone by the time I came along, but the accent returned when he visited the South.

My dad had five sisters. Their dad left the family around 1922 and his mother, sisters, and he struggled financially. My dad was the only one of his siblings to earn a college degree. He studied at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville before moving to Brooklyn, New York in 1930. He earned a B.A. in history from Brooklyn, College.

Cold War Anti-Communism

What was my dad referring to when he said, “turn a defeat into a barricade?” I never asked much about his difficulties as a child or youth. He did tell me the story of some difficulties at the start of the 1941 Gimbels strike, which the union won. But I imagine he was mainly referring to the impact of anti-communism on the lives of our family and on working people and the left – and the need to find a way to continue to struggle despite the difficulties one was living through.

My mom told me my dad left home for a few days to evade being served with a subpoena. I imagine this was due to an investigation of the New York City retail unions by the House Education and Labor Committee in 1947 or 1948. The members of several left-wing locals, including Local 2, voted to leave RWDSU in 1948 to preserve the autonomy of the locals. Wolchuck was appointing anti-communists to administer the locals because their leaders refused to sign the Taft-Hartley non-communist affidavits.

The continuing anti-communist climate of the late 1940s and early 1950s and difficult economic conditions beginning around 1952 led to a retreat by the left-wing department store locals; they returned to the RWDSU. My dad returned to retail work, this time as a furniture salesperson at Gimbels’ main store on 34^th street. He served for many years as steward of his department.

An Engaged Citizen

In 1965, when I was a civil rights worker with the West Tennessee Voters Project (WTVP), my dad was part of a delegation of parents visiting with Justice Department officials and members of Congress and their aides to demand protection for our movement. The delegation was led by Cornell Professor Douglas Dowd, a leader of the WTVP.

My dad’s handwritten notes of the parents’ meeting described our upcoming march to protest police action and demand jobs for African Americans in the area. He concluded that the delegates “were received warmly and listened to sympathetically, all of whom promised to look into the situation.” It turned out, however, that the march that we held on August 8, 1965, in Brownsville, Haywood County seat, ended with attacks on us. Nevertheless, we persisted; we kept fighting.

My dad was concerned with justice for all. At the Passover Seder, in his reply to the Four Questions, he spoke of the history of the Jewish people and the need to speak up for all people suffering from injustice. He particularly focused on the African American struggle for civil rights. Some years later, he sent a contribution to the National Association of Irish Freedom, writing, “I am neither Irish nor Catholic but I think the fight against oppression is everyone’s battle.”

Speaking Up for Peace and Justice

Equally concerned with peace, my dad and mom joined my older brother Ron and me in Washington, D.C. at a vast demonstration protesting the Vietnam War in 1967. Two years earlier, as a student at Cornell University, I wrote a paper criticizing Congress for enacting the Tonkin Gulf resolution giving President Lyndon Johnson a green light to escalate the Vietnam War including sending in ground troops. On May 9, 1972, my dad wrote Senator Jacob Javits to criticize President Richard Nixon’s mining of the harbors of North Vietnam and calling on the Congress “to stop this madness now.”

Cold war confrontations and the threat of nuclear war were among my dad’s concerns. He wrote President Jimmy Carter early in the latter’s presidency: “The dangers and burden of the arms race must finally be brought under control.” He wrote Carter again in 1979 to criticize the president’s firing of Bella Abzug. “I too am appalled at your support for a swollen Defense Budget (a cause of our inflation) at the expensive of social services so desperately needed by our people.”

A year before my dad’s 1979 letter to Carter, he and my mom watched a TV documentary, “The Unknown War,” about the Soviet Union’s fight against the Nazi invasion. He wrote WOR-TV to congratulate the station on the 20-part series. “After all, the Russians were our allies in the most bitter war in mankind’s history.”

Writing to President Gerald Ford, my dad declared “I think it is outrageous that you should have pardoned Richard Nixon now before the process of justice has even begun. You have dealt the concept of equal justice a severe blow. We do need more compassion in this country – but for the victims not the perpetrators – for our country which was so badly served by Richard Nixon and for our great institutions which he almost undermined.” One can guess what he would have thought about the Supreme Court granting Donald Trump immunity.

Conclusion

Fighting for the needs of ordinary people and for justice was always on my dad’s mind. He was saddened by the defeat of the Spanish Republic and remained close to Dr. Edward Barsky, who served in Spain. Upon Barsky’s death in 1975, my dad wrote the family on behalf of himself and my mom, “We mourn the passing of our friend, our surgeon and great fighter for freedom everywhere but especially for the Spanish people.”

We face today the genocide in Gaza, a continuing disastrous war in Ukraine, a more bloated military budget than my dad could have imagined. The most important barricades to set up are those against the ongoing wars and the danger of a nuclear conflict. Engaging in true diplomacy is task number one. Dismantling our military bases and deep cuts in military spending will promote peace, help reduce inflation, and free resources for domestic needs.

My Mom and Dad

Sources

Interview by Levering of Gordon K. Greenfield, Scc. Treas. Oppenheim Collins, August 25, 1948, Daniel Paper Papers, Box 28, Tamiment Institute, New York University.

Kirstein, George G. 1950. Stores and Unions : A Study of the Growth of Unionism in Dry Goods and Department Stores. New York: Fairchild Publications.

Lancaster, Burt, Shout! Factory (Firm), and Timeless Media Group. 2013. The Unknown War. WWII, the Russian Front. Los Angeles, CA, Eugene, OR: Shout! Factory ; Timeless Media Group.

Opler, Daniel J. 2007. For All White-Collar Workers : The Possibilities of Radicalism in New York City’s Department Store Unions, 1934-1953. Columbus: Ohio State University Press.

A 2024 Blueprint for Radical Change in Foreign and Domestic US Policy

Martin Halpern — Mon, 04 Nov 2024 21:28:17 GMT

Optimistic by nature, I expect voters tomorrow to decisively turn the page on the Trump era. The grass roots peace, Palestinian rights, reproductive rights, labor, immigrant and gay rights movements all seek to move the country forward not backward to nativism, racism, and misogyny. We seek to end the looming threat of authoritarianism and fascism and to create a better life for working people and for our children and grandchildren.

It's time to shift away from seeking global dominance and toward taking care of the needs of people at home and assisting the people of the world through the United Nations. It’s time to end the forever wars and the threat of nuclear annihilation.

The day after the election victory, the campaign to achieve the radical changes the country needs should go into high gear. We need a popular front for peace, social justice, and working people’s needs. The popular front should unite around pressuring our government to pursue diplomacy rather than war making and war preparation. Military spending should be slashed and military bases around the world closed. We should join the vast majority of the nations of the world in pursuing the elimination of nuclear weapons and climate justice.

In an essay published by Common Dreams on March 26, 2024, I outlined a domestic program embodying two key structural reforms and nine legislative goals. You can read that essay here.

The Peculiar Politics of Third Party and Independent Candidates in 2024

Martin Halpern — Sat, 26 Oct 2024 20:54:29 GMT

Although the United States has had a two-party system for most of its history, on occasion third party challenges have shaken things up and moved the political system to the right or the left. Do third-party and independent candidates have that potential in 2024?

The politics of this year’s presidential election, by far the most expensive in our history, are distinctive. The media provide the public with poll-after-poll, focus on the horse race, and, in most cases, treat Donald Trump’s ever more extreme pronouncements as if they were part of a normal competitive two-candidate race. a recent CNN poll indicates that only 1 percent of likely voters who are “locked in” to their choice say they’ll vote for someone other than Trump or Harris. However, 30 percent of those who are undecided or might change their mind support a minor or independent candidate. One might guess that these voters are paying less attention since few of them say they are “extremely motivated” to vote.

This essay has three goals: to provide historical background on third party and independent parties and candidates; to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the two-party system; and to evaluate the likely role of third party and independent candidates in 2024.

As a historian, I’m mindful of the progressive role of some past challenges to the two dominant parties. However, after the Civil War, the two major parties were flexible enough to fend off challenges and too rooted in the country’s economic system to be displaced.

Independent Parties in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

Beginning in 1840, the Liberty Party, the Free Soil Party, and, finally, the Republican Party contributed to the anti-slavery cause. In the late 19^th century, parties such as the Greenback Party, the Populist Party, and various labor and socialist parties gained significant votes in state and local elections and brought attention to labor and anti-monopoly issues.

In the early and mid-twentieth century, three different Progressive parties organized themselves around nationally known figures (former president Theodore Roosevelt, Wisconsin Senator Robert LaFollette, and former Vice President Henry Wallace) to contest for the presidency with varying degrees of success at highlighting a labor-progressive agenda and in the Wallace case, peace and civil rights issues. Beginning with George Wallace’s 1968 bid, however, the biggest votes for alternative presidential candidates has been for candidates of the right (Wallace and Ross Perot) and the center-right (John Anderson).

Strengths of the Two-Party System

The two-party system in the U.S. is rooted in the material interests of office holders, aspirants for office, and party supporters. For example, John Souval explains that “Andrew Jackson’s Democratic Party built a strong base by celebrating white squatters as pioneering yeomen and encouraging their land grabs through preemption laws, Indian removal, and hawkish diplomacy.”[i]

Establishing bases at the local level, political leaders made their living as office holders and provided jobs, contracts, and various financial benefits to their supporters. Politics has been a form of business in our capitalist economy.

When reform movements arose, one or the other of the two major parties responded and incorporated some version of the reform demand in their program. For example, the Republicans in the 1860s and 1870s adopted some of the positions of the abolitionist movement. In the 1896 election, the Democrats under William Jennings Bryan adopted some of the pro-labor and pro-farmer positions of the Populist Party and won the Populists’ endorsement. In the 1930s, the Democrats under Franklin Roosevelt adopted ideas for unemployment insurance, old age pensions, and labor law reform proposed by the unions, Socialist, and Communist parties and the Townsend movements. Roosevelt also worked with pro-labor third parties in New York, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. In the 1960s, the Democrats moved away from their segregationist and conservative base to embrace the demands of the civil rights movement and to establish Medicare.

Failures of the Two-Party System Today

The two-party system is failing us today. Corporations and the wealthy have an outsize influence on both parties, using money in campaigns, shaping media narratives, and lobbying elected representatives. As a result, even when the Democrats, the party less dominated by corporate interests, put forward positive ideas such as labor law reform or a national health care system, they fail to achieve them.

When the Democrats do have a major achievement, such as the expansion of the child tax credit under the 2021 American Rescue Plan to “$3,600 per child younger than age 6 and $3,000 per child up to age 17,” they fail to keep it in place. The best the Democrats have done is to maintain and strengthen achievements from the New Deal and civil rights eras such as support for unions, Medicare and voting rights and to provide support for affirmative action, reproductive freedom, and gay rights.

The Republicans’ domestic achievements since the 1960s have been in line with its role as the preferred party of business, the wealthy, and social conservatives. It has provided large tax cuts to corporations and the rich, incorporated southern segregationists and racists generally into their base, weakened unions, undermined abortion rights, packed the Supreme Court with right-wing extremists, and continued to promote individualism and the idea that anyone can be rich. Donald Trump has added to the Republican brand an extreme variant of nativism, authoritarianism, and support for violence, insurrectionism, and fascism.

Most important to understanding public disaffection with the two-party system is that both parties are dominated by supporters of the military-industrial-intelligence complex. In 2024, the Defense Department alone will spend $1.43 trillion. The maintenance of one hundred military bases around the world, the conduct of endless wars, and the attempt to maintain U.S. hegemony in the world system deprives our government of the ability to provide for the educational, childcare, health, housing, food, and transportation needs of its citizens.[ii]

To take health care as one example, the U.S. spends far more than other countries for health care because of the corporate domination of that sector of our economy, but the “U.S. has the lowest life expectancy at birth, the highest death rates for avoidable or treatable conditions, the highest maternal and infant mortality, and among the highest suicide rates” compared with other high-income countries.[iii]

It’s not surprising, then, that, according to a 2023 survey by Pew, 28 percent of people in the U.S. have a negative view of both the Democratic and Republican parties. An even larger group, 37 percent, said they “often wish there were more parties to choose from.”

Failure of Efforts to Increase the Number of Parties

There have been several efforts in the last three decades to increase voters’ political choices such as the New Party and Labor Party movements. In two states, Connecticut and New York, the Working Families Party is a viable third party because state law permits fusion voting under which a candidate can receive votes from more than one party. In 1997, the Supreme Court in Timmons v. Twin Cities Area New Party upheld Minnesota’s ban on fusion voting, leading to the decline of the New Party. Many states ban fusion voting and immediate runoff or rank choice voting under which a voter’s vote is redistributed to their second (or third) choice if their first choice does not prevail. Only Maine and Alaska use rank choice voting. The two parties have been largely successful in passing state legislation to prevent alternative parties from getting a national power base in our winner-take-all single member constituency system.

Independent Voters and Independent and Third-Party Candidates

According to Gallup, 43 percent of adults in the U.S. identified as independents in 2023, tying 2014 as the highest percentage for independents since Gallup began asking the question in 1991. Both Gallup and Pew note, however, that most independents lean to one or the other of the two major parties. Pew reports that 19 percent of independents and 7 percent of the public as a whole lean toward neither of the two parties.

I have often voted for alternatives to the major party candidates in presidential elections. I haven’t done so in recent years, but I disagree with those who say a vote for a third-party candidate is a vote for Donald Trump. Third party candidates have a right to run, and voters have a right to choose them. Third party presidential candidates have varied purposes for pursuing campaigns in which they have essentially no chance to win the office they are seeking. They may be trying to build their organization, educate voters about their programs, or trying to push one or the other of the major parties toward their views. And sometimes they are trying to win votes away from the party they are closest to and hurt that party’s chances. When the latter is the aim, the anger of the major party directed at the third-party challenger is understandable.

Nader and the 2000 Election

In 2000 Ralph Nader ran on the Green Party ticket, garnered large crowds at his rallies, and railed at the Democrats for abandoning progressive positions. I voted for Nader in 1996 when he did not run much of a campaign and there was little chance that Bill Clinton would be defeated by a weak Republican candidate. Clinton’s move to the right on welfare, immigration, and foreign policy, labor law reform, and health care had disappointed me.

My research on the 2000 election led me to conclude that Nader had moved the political debate a little to the left. Al Gore adopted some progressive positions championed by Nader. On the other hand, Nader putting his main fire against the Democrat helped the conservative Republican George W. Bush.

Did Nader cost Gore the election? Gore, of course, won the popular vote. Nader’s margin exceeded the difference between Bush and Gore only in Florida and New Hampshire. Gore lost Florida for two reasons: 1) the Republican staffers employment of thuggish tactics against those conducting the recount and the Democrats’ failure to mobilize to protect the vote. 2) the intervention of the Republican majority on the Supreme Court to end the recount and give the election to Bush.

As I show in Unions, Radicals and Democratic Presidents: Seeking Social Change in the Twentieth Century, while Nader voters nationally would, according to exit polls, been more inclined to vote for Gore than Bush if Nader had not been in the race, the Florida exit polls showed Nader voters were evenly split between Bush and Gore. While the New Hampshire Nader voters were more like voters nationally, redistributing the Nader vote with his hypothetical absence from the race reduced the gap but still left Bush as the New Hampshire victory.

Another factor to consider, as I mention in Unions, Radicals, is that right winger Pat Buchanan’s anti-corporate campaign might have pulled the political debate to the right without the authentic anti-corporate Nader in the race. However, it is also true, that “In an appearance on Meet the Press and in an interview with the American Prospect, Nader indicated a lack of concern with the outcome of the Bush-Gore contest and an apparent preference for defeating Gore: “The Democrats really do need a cold shower.”

Are Third Party and Independent Choices This Year Designed to Help Trump?

The most successful alternative candidate in 2024, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. began as a candidate in the Democratic primaries, shifted to an independent campaign, and shifted again to endorsing Donald Trump. Kennedy’s campaign was a mixture of radical, conservative, and conspiracy-oriented themes. Some of the weird news stories about him toward the end of his campaign may explain what appeared to be unexplainable. But his endorsement of Trump seems to indicate that, like Trump, Kennedy is a narcissist motivated principally by the desire to hurt those who he thinks have wounded him.

Some voters dissatisfied with the candidates of the two major parties intend to vote for Jill Stein of the Green Party or Cornel West, an independent left-wing intellectual, this year. Although the Libertarian Party tends to be a right-of-center party and in the past drew more Republican-leaning than Democratic-leaning voters, the New York Times describes Chase Oliver, its candidate this year, as left-leaning and someone who became “politically active as an opponent of the Iraq War and describes himself as ‘armed and gay.’ He opposes Israel’s actions in Gaza and wants to abolish the Federal Reserve.” There are also some socialist presidential candidates in the race running modest campaigns and a right-wing anti-abortion candidate, Randall Terry.

Does it make sense for a progressive or leftist to vote for a third party or independent candidate in 2024? Even though the Republican Party has become a far-right party and that Trump’s promotion of the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol makes him an existential threat to democracy, all the independent and third-party choices this year are aiming their fire at Kamala Harris, not Trump. Given that reality, it’s not surprising that Republicans have been helping both Stein and West get on the ballot.

The Associated Press reported in August that “Republicans and their allies have worked to get West on the ballot in Arizona, Wisconsin, Virginia, North Carolina, Nebraska, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Maine, all in the hope that West will help boost former President Donald Trump’s chances of winning later this year by pulling support from Harris.”

Erin Ryan and Max Fischer provide a comprehensive and devastating critique of Jill Stein’s candidacy in a podcast entitled, “Why is Jill Stein trying to Get Trump Elected?” Stein critiques the Biden Administration and Harris over the Gaza genocide but ignores the fact that Trump is unreserved in his support for Netanyahu and has never uttered one word of concern about the Palestinians. She says that Trump would also be “terrible” and that “a very dire situation . . . will be continued under both Democrats and Republicans. So we say there is no lesser evil in this race.” Both Trump and independent Cornel West have support for Trump-affiliated attorneys and gladly accept that support.[iv]

Stein told the New York Times on October 20, 2024, “I myself do not speak in terms of defeating one candidate. But I really understand — for the communities that are being savaged by Kamala Harris right now and Biden — I totally understand why their prime directive right now is to clarify that this comes with a price to pay.”

Focusing much of her attention on Arab American and Muslim communities, Stein has been endorsed by one predominately Muslim group, “Abandon Harris.” The group began in the fall of 2023 as an “Abandon Biden” effort. Its focus was on the genocide in Gaza and the Biden Administration’s policies. It did not discuss Trump’s approach to the genocide in Gaza or his policy to ban travel from Muslim countries when he was president or his pledge to exclude refugees from Gaza if he is elected president once again.

Other Arab American and pro-Palestinian groups take account of the Trump threat and are pursuing different courses.

The Uncommitted National Movement on September 19 issued a statement affirming that it “1) cannot endorse Vice President Harris; 2) opposes a Donald Trump presidency, whose agenda includes plans to accelerate the killing in Gaza while intensifying the suppression of anti-war organizing; and 3) is not recommending a third-party vote in the Presidential election, especially as third party votes in key swing states could help inadvertently deliver a Trump presidency given our country’s broken electoral college system.”

The group Muslim Women for Harris disbanded after the Democrats failed to include a Palestinian American speaker at its convention, but it has since reconstituted itself. The group urged Muslim Americans "to vote for Vice President Harris and Governor Walz this November; with the stated caveat that we will continue to both pressure the Biden administration for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza, and for real policy change from the Harris-Walz campaign."

Conclusion

In supporting a vote for Harris and Walz, I share Angela Davis’s view about this election. “It’s not just about electing Kamala Harris,” Davis stated at the Festival of l’Humanité in France. It’s about opening space for “those of us who are more radical than Kamala Harris to put anti-capitalist and anti-racist programs forward” and increase the pressure for change, “especially in the first place when it comes to the genocide being inflicted on the people of Palestine.”

“When we engage in electoral politics, it can’t be just because a particular individual is running for office,” Davis told the crowd, “it is to enlarge the terrain of mass struggle, to guarantee a space for the trade union movement to win victories, for the women’s movement to win victories, for people of color to win victories, for working and poor people to win victories.”

In a recent lecture at Princeton University, Davis told her audience about growing up during the McCarthy period and seeing the FBI tracking friends and family members. “It’s really important not to find ourselves in another period like that, where we have to use all of our energy to fight to save those who are the targets of repression, as opposed to doing the organizing we should be for revolution.” Trump has promised to provide just such a scenario -- and worse – if he returns to the White House. It would be a tragedy if that were to occur.

Notes

[i]. Abstract for John Suval, Dangerous Ground: Squatters, Statesmen, and the Antebellum Rupture of American Democracy (New York, Oxford University Press, 2022). https://academic-oup-com.proxy.library.upenn.edu/book/45052?login=true&token=eyJhbGciOiJub25lIn0.eyJleHAiOjE3MzI0NzU4NjQsImp0aSI6ImRiNzg4MTUzLWM2ZTctNDE4Ni05ZjFkLTljOTNiNGVkOGZlYSJ9.

[ii]. FY 2024, Department of Defense. https://www.usaspending.gov/agency/department-of-defense?fy=2024

[iii]. Commonwealth Fund, “U.S. Health Care from a Global Perspective, 2022: Accelerating Spending, Worsening Outcomes,” January 31, 2023. https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2023/jan/us-health-care-global-perspective-2022

[iv]. By Allison Novelo “Republican allies boost longshot candidate Jill Stein as Democrats try to remove her from ballots in battleground states,” CBS News, September 17, 2024. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/republican-allies-jill-stein-green-party-democrats-ballots-battleground-states/; Emma Platoff , “A longtime GOP operative helped the Green Party’s Jill Stein get on the N.H. ballot. Democrats smell mischief,” Boston Globe, September 11, 2024. https://www.bostonglobe.com/2024/09/10/metro/jill-stein-new-hampshire-ballot-republican-help/. Jake Pellett and Deb Otis, “Jill Stein and ‘spoiler season,’” Fair Vote, October 21, 2024. https://fairvote.org/jill-stein-and-spoiler-season/

< https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefings-statements/president-donald-j-trump-keeps-promise-open-u-s-embassy-jerusalem-israel/>

Preventing A Larger War, Avoiding Armageddon

Martin Halpern — Sat, 19 Oct 2024 17:24:55 GMT

The danger of a larger war in the Middle East seems to grow every day. Israel continues its genocide in Gaza, attacks Palestinians on the West Bank, invades Lebanon, make the United Nations (UN) Secretary General persona non grata, and attacks UN peacekeepers in Lebanon. Israel, a nuclear-armed state, also seems to be seeking to provoke a war with Iran with the hope that it will draw the United States directly into the conflict.

Is Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s goal to prolong the war so that he holds onto power and thus avoids prison? Is his vision an apocalyptic one, that a general war can produce a remaking of the Middle East so that the dominance of the U.S.-Israel alliance will be ensured for the foreseeable future? Does the Israeli prime minister remember that twenty-one years ago, he encouraged the U.S. to invade Iraq with exactly the same prediction?

War with Iran?

Ignoring that history, Netanyahu addressed the Iranian people, at once appealing to them and threatening them. Contradictorily, he claims Iran “plunges our region deeper into darkness, deeper into war” but asserts “there is no place in the Middle East Israel cannot reach. There’s nowhere we will not go to protect our people and our country.” The Israeli leader tells the Iranian people that its government wastes money on nuclear weapons and wars instead of spending money on children’s education, health care, and development of the country’s infrastructure. Misplaced funding priorities, of course, are even more true of Israel and the United States.

Though it backs Israel, the Biden Administration has no appetite for a war with Iran. It is sensible enough to recall the disasters that resulted from the U.S. invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. Furthermore, it may also be considering that Iran’s alliance with Russia might mean that U.S. involvement in an Israeli-initiated war with Iran could lead to direct conflict with Russia with the risk of escalation into a nuclear war.

Can the U.S. Restrain Israel?

On October 15, CNN reported that , in an apparent nod to U.S. concerns, “Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have assured the U.S. that a counterstrike on Iran will be limited to military targets rather than oil or nuclear facilities.” Nevertheless, the risk that Iran and Israel, as John Mearsheimer puts it, will go up the escalation ladder remains significant.[1]

In Mearsheimer’s view, the U.S. and Israel are “joined at the hip” because of the influence of the Israel Lobby in the U.S. As if to document Mearsheimer’s point, a spokesperson for the U.S. National Security told CNN, “Our commitment to Israel’s defense is ironclad.”

Despite Mearsheimer’s argument that the Israel Lobby is all powerful with the legislative and executive branches of the U.S. government, it is not impossible for the U.S. to take a stance against Israel. There have been occasions when U.S. presidents have opposed Israel’s actions. The most notable example was when the Eisenhower Administration in 1956 opposed the invasion of Egypt by Israel, the United Kingdom, and France, and forced their withdrawal.

More recently, the Administration of George H. W. Bush opposed the right-wing Israeli government of Yitzhak Shamir. In May 1989, Bush’s Secretary of State James Baker proclaimed that Israel must accept U.N. resolution 242 providing for its withdrawal from the territory it seized in 1967. Baker told the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the principal organization of the Israel Lobby, that Israel had to “lay aside, once and for all, the unrealistic vision of a greater Israel.” The Bush Administration held up $10 billion in loan guarantees over Jewish settlements on occupied land, Bush declaring that “the settlements are counterproductive to peace.”[2]

More recently still, the Obama Administration in 2015 negotiated a nuclear deal with Iran and rejected Israel’s demand that Iran be required to recognize Israel.[3]

The 30-Day Deadline

Although the Biden Administration has for months talked about a ceasefire deal to end the genocide in Gaza, it has failed to take the decisive step of withholding armaments from Israel or insisting that its ally change its behavior. This week there was the first sign that the Biden Administration may act. On Sunday, October 13, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin gave Israel 30 days, as CNN put it, “to improve the humanitarian situation in Gaza . . . or risk violating US laws governing foreign military assistance, suggesting US military aid could be in jeopardy.”

The thirty-day deadline comes after the November presidential election. Is this an attempt to respond to the peace movement? Nihad Awad, National Executive Director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) declared: “Although we welcome the Biden administration’s long overdue threat to withhold weapons from the Israeli government, waiting 30 days to do so is unacceptable. The Israeli government is starving and killing the Palestinian people today, right this very moment, in violation of U.S. law. The Palestinian people cannot wait another month for the Biden administration to uphold the law and end its complicity in the Israeli government’s campaign of slaughter and starvation.”

The Ukraine War

There is another front where we have a right to worry about an escalation to a nuclear conflict. Although the Ukraine War may be reaching its end point, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy is seeking to change what has thus far been a proxy war on the part of the West against Russia into a direct war between the U.S. and Russia. Those two states have the power, given the size of their nuclear arsenals, to end human life on the planet.

Fortunately, the Biden Administration has thus far refused to authorize Ukrainian long-range strikes deep into Russian territory with U.S. weapons. U.S. personnel would be directly involved. On October 17, White House press secretary and senior presidential advisor Karine Jean-Pierre confirmed, “Our policy . . . with respect to prohibiting the use of ATACMS or long-range strikes inside of Russia has not changed. That is not going to change.”

Unfortunately, moving toward a diplomatic solution to the war remains off the table for the Biden Administration thus far. On September 24, United Nations Secretary General António Guterres declared, “The longer this tragic war continues, the greater the risk of escalation and spillover.” Nonetheless, Guterres pointed to the Black Sea Grain Initiative and prisoner exchanges as indications that a diplomatic path was possible. “Today, though the prospects for peace may seem distant, I am inspired by the growing calls for dialogue.”

A People’s Response to Militarism and War

How can ordinary citizens contribute to peace? Most member states of the United Nations are speaking up against the genocide in Gaza and in favor of Palestinian rights. The flourishing of democratic activism by the world’s peoples is the only answer if one accepts Frederick Douglass’s dictum, “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”

It is especially important for those of us living in the United States to put pressure on our government since it is our government that is Israel’s principal backer and is chiefly responsible for arming Ukraine against Russia rather than reaching a diplomatic solution to that conflict. Dr. Martin Luther King’s remark that the U.S. was the “greatest purveyor of violence in the world today” remains as relevant today as it was during the Vietnam War.

Democracy is alive and well at the grass roots of our country. That’s been apparent in the campus encampments opposing the genocide in Gaza. On October 6, I joined a Jewish Voices of Peace (JVP) standout in Northampton, about 30 minutes from my home. I held up a huge banner with another JVP member calling for a cut-off of military equipment to Israel. About twenty-five of us spent an hour at a busy roundabout holding up signs for a ceasefire, Palestinian rights, an end to the genocide in Gaza, and opposition to a larger war in the Middle East.

Pressure for a ceasefire, an end to the genocide, and a cut-off of military aid to Israel has come from the student encampments, the peace movement, the uncommitted movement within the Democratic Party, Jewish Voices for Peace, Arab American organizations, and Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib. Ninety members of Congress (89 Democrats and one independent) have called for a ceasefire.[4]

As I’ve lived in Massachusetts for only two years, I asked my fellow banner-holder, about whether efforts had been made to pass city council resolutions. My fellow JVA member told me resolutions supporting a ceasefire have been adopted by the Town Council in Amherst and the City Council in Northampton. Local news accounts highlighted the impassioned pleas of residents.[5]

Personal Reflections

During the Iraq War, there was a campaign to get city councils to pass peace resolutions. Many cities did so, but although we were on the front page of our small-town newspaper, our Arkadelphia, Arkansas, group failed to get a single council member to vote for our resolution. Even the resolution’s sponsor voted against it because of the pressure by other council members and pro-war community members. He lost his business in the aftermath of our peace campaign.

Today, repression by pro-war groups and institutions has led to the arrest of many members of student encampments and the resignation of some university presidents.

I’ve worked on the issue of Palestinian rights, off and on for over fifty years. My first recognition of the issue was in 1967. I was in Greenwich Village in Manhattan with a friend from college who, like me, was Jewish. We were out late and one of us picked up the next day’s copy of the New York Times. Across the front page was a map with arrows showing Israel’s attack on its neighbors.

I can’t remember my friend’s name, but my guess is that we were active in the movement against the Vietnam War together. Nevertheless, our reactions to the Times story were opposite. We’d both been following U.S. mainstream news report that emphasized Arab threats, but my focus was on the map.

Look who’s doing the aggressing, I argued. To be honest, I don’t recall his counterargument. Perhaps he brought up the Holocaust, anti-Semitism, or Arab opposition to the right of Israel to exist. Although those ideas may have been convincing to some, they did not justify Israel’s aggression. And, in a sense, they were beside the point if the point is to understand the reasons for the aggression. Israel was the far superior military power, and it defeated its neighbors in six days.

“When it was over,” Eric Alterman comments on the Six-Day War, the area of land under or Israel’s control was more than four times that within its 1948 borders – to say nothing of the far smaller territory accorded it by the 1947 partition plan.”[6] Israel acquired the West Bank including East Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip, the Sinai, and the Golan Heights. With U.S. support, Israel has defied numerous United Nations resolutions for the return of those territories and the right of Palestinians to return to their homes. The U.S. today fails to stop Israel’s genocide and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Gaza.

Trump Would be Worse on Israel Policy

As bad as the Biden Administration’s policy on Israel has been, Donald Trump would be worse. As president Trump reversed U.S. policy that recognized the illegality of Israeli settlements on occupied lands. In recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and moving the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, Trump ignored the legal status of East Jerusalem as occupied territory, not a part of Israel. Although it took over three years, Secretary of State Blinken announced in February 2024 a return to the pre-Trump policy “that Israeli settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank is "inconsistent with international law."

Trump sends conflicting messages, claiming Israel has a “big protector” in him but faces “total annihilation” if Vice President Kamala Harris gets elected. Any Jewish person who votes for Harris is a “fool,” the Republican presidential candidate asserts. Trump’s ideology is a mix of nativism, racism, Islamophobia, and anti-Semitism.

Trump on Ukraine

With respect to the Ukraine War, Republican voters and officeholders are less supportive of continued military funding of Ukraine than are Democratic voters and officeholders. In his single debate with Kamala Harris, Trump refused to say he wanted Ukraine to prevail against Russia. He declared instead, “I want the war to stop” and claimed if elected, he would “get it settled before I even become president.”

During his presidency, Trump’s approach to Ukraine was inconsistent. His administration provided significant direct military aid to Ukraine, something the Obama Administration had refused to do. However, Trump later withheld funding and tried to pressure Ukraine into providing negative information about Hunter and Joseph Biden, leading to his first impeachment.

The Trump administration’s foreign policy toward Russia and Ukraine was often incoherent. Dr. Ruth Deyermond, Senior Lecturer in Post-Soviet Security at King’s College in the United Kingdom notes, “Trump took a significantly more conciliatory position with Russia than that to which his administration was committed.” However, Trump achieved no breakthrough in improving U.S. relations with Russia or resolving the conflict between Russia and the Ukraine government that came to power in 2014 because of a U.S.-sponsored coup. Moreover, his administration increased tensions by pulling out of both the Intermediate Nuclear Forces treaty with Russia and the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with Iran, China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, and tthe European Union (EU).[7]

Would Trump be able to deliver on his claim of producing a deal to end the Ukraine War? When he was asked in the debate with President Biden if Vladimir Putin’s terms for ending the war were acceptable, Trump said they were not.[8] Given the inconsistency in his approach to foreign policy toward Russia during his presidency, his extremist plans for being a dictator, deporting millions of immigrants, jailing his opponents, attacking voting, abortion, and trans rights, peace-making would likely be a low priority.

Two Underlying Problems

A commitment by both major parties and the military-industrial-intelligence complex to U.S. hegemony is one underlying problem. This began in the closing days of World War II with the creating of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. It continued through the cold war with the establishment of U.S. military bases around the world and U.S. interventions to overthrow dozens of governments. It continued after the cold war in what U.S. leaders thought of as “the unipolar moment.” It continues today despite the existence of other major powers -- China, Russia, and India -- and the reality of multi-polarity in the world system.

The other underlying problem is that U.S. foreign policy is a giant profit-making scam. Despite one failed war after another, U.S. leaders continue to pursue their failed approach.

Jeffrey Sachs explains it: “The puzzle is solved by recognizing that American foreign policy is not at all about the interests of the American people. It is about the interests of the Washington insiders, as they chase campaign contributions and lucrative jobs for themselves, staff, and family members. . . . The $1.5 trillion in military outlays is the scam that keeps on giving—to the military-industrial complex and the Washington insiders—even as it impoverishes and endangers America and the world.”

The foreign policy scam is the most dangerous because of the lives lost and the threat of a nuclear war, but Sachs points to the health industry, Wall Street, and energy industry scams as “each division [of government] uses public power for private gain through insider dealing, greased by corporate campaign contributions and lobbying outlays.”

The Radical Solution

It will take a fundamental change in our economic system to put an end to the corruption, abuse of power, harm to millions around the world, and the failure to meet the needs of the people of the United States. An intermediate step toward that goal is the creation of a radical movement to end the forever wars, close military bases, slash military spending, create a national health care system, and establish public control of the energy and banking sectors of the economy.

NOTES

[1]. For Mearsheimer’s views, see the interviews posted on his Substack, Youtube, and elsewhere and the book, John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt. 2007. The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux).

[2]. George C. Herring, 2008, From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations since 1776 (New York: Oxford University Press), 922-23.

[3]. Remarks by the President on the Iran Nuclear Deal, White House statement, August 5, 2015. https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2015/08/05/remarks-president-iran-nuclear-deal;“Iran nuclear deal: US there for Israel, warns Obama,” April 7, 2015, BBC News. <https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-32194275>

[4]. See https://ceasefireaction.com/ for a list.

[5]. Karen Brown, “Amherst Town Council passes ceasefire resolution, after 5 hours of debate,” New England Public Media, March 06, 2024. https://www.wbur.org/news/2024/03/06/amherst-massachusetts-ceasefire-israel-hamas-gaza; James Paleologopoulos, “Northampton, Mass. city council approves Gaza ceasefire resolution,” WAMC Northeast Public Radio, February 29, 2024. <https://www.wamc.org/news/2024-02-29/northampton-mass-city-council-approves-gaza-ceasefire-resolution>

[6]. Eric Alterman, 2022, We Are Not One: A History of America’s Fight over Israel (First edition; New York: Basic Books), 122.

[7]. Ruth Deyermond, “The Trump presidency, Russia and Ukraine: Explaining Incoherence,” International Affairs, 99: 4 (2023) 1595 –1614; doi: 10.1093/ia/iiad120.

[8]. Transcript of Biden-Trump Debate, June 28, 2024. https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/27/politics/read-biden-trump-debate-rush-transcript/index.html

ADDITIONAL SOURCES

“Ahead of U.S. election, Trump ends a U.S. restriction applying to Israeli settlements, October 28, 2020, Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/article/world/ahead-of-us-election-trump-ends-a-us-restriction-applying-to-israeli-settle-idUSKBN27D23W/

Zaha Hassan, “Trump’s Plan for Israel and Palestine: One More Step Away From Peace,” December 11, 2018, Carnegie Endowment for Peace. <https://carnegieendowment.org/research/2018/12/trumps-plan-for-israel-and-palestine-one-more-step-away-from-peace?lang=en>

“President Donald J. Trump Keeps His Promise To Open U.S. Embassy In Jerusalem, Israel.” Statement from the White House, May 14, 2018.

Wars, the Nuclear Trigger, and Peace Voters

Martin Halpern — Mon, 16 Sep 2024 20:43:39 GMT

For progressives and people on the left in the United States and around the world, the genocide in Gaza is the overriding issue today. Although progressives are divided on the both the causes and the potential solutions to the Ukraine War, the latest push by Ukrainian President Zelenskyy to authorize missile strikes deep into Russian territory is worrisome.

The most recent news is that no decision has been made by the United States and the United Kingdom to comply with the Ukrainian request. Fulfillment of the request would mean direct U.S. involvement in a war against Russia since the ATACMS missiles would be operated by U.S. personnel. A military conflict between the two most heavily armed nuclear states would increase the risk of escalation to a nuclear war, a fundamental threat to life on the planet.

How and why did we get here? Peace activists have been campaigning to ban the bomb for decades. Most United Nations members have ratified treaties to ban the testing of nuclear weapons, to stop their spread, and to ban them.

The treaty with the widest adherence is the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. Signed by the Soviet Union, the U.S., and United Kingdom in 1968, the treaty came into force in 1970 and has 190 participating countries today. Only five states fail to participate – India, Pakistan, Israel, and South Sudan remain outside the treaty.

The Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) has been ratified by 178 states but has not yet come into force because of the failure to ratify by eight treaty-specified states including China and the U.S. Although Russia ratified the treaty in 2000, it rescinded its ratification in November 2023 in the wake of increased tensions with the U.S. Nevertheless, both the U.S. and Russia today pledge to refrain from testing.

The Arms Control Association notes that the Trump Administration “walked back the United States support for the CTBT,” stating it would not seek ratification of the treaty signed by President Bill Clinton and pledging only that the U.S. “will not resume nuclear explosive testing unless necessary to ensure the safety and effectiveness of the U.S. nuclear arsenal.” In contrast, the Biden Administration in 2021 stated that it would work to bring the treaty into force but has not sought Senate ratification.

Most far-reaching is the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which entered into force on January 22, 2021. No nuclear weapons state adheres to it, but the fact that it came into force anyway shows the determination of many United Nations member-states to put an end to the madness of states continuing to maintain nuclear arsenals that can destroy the world. Ninety-eight states have signed the treaty and seventy have ratified it.

There is little discussion of the nuclear threat in the U.S. mainstream media or in the presidential campaign. There is no indication that either Democrats or Republicans will embrace efforts to get the U.S. to ratify the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Even so, along with effectively tackling global warming, eliminating nuclear weapons is humanity’s greatest need.

Although Republican presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan supported arms control agreements, the most recent Republican presidents, George W. Bush and Trump withdrew the U.S. from the anti-ballistic missile treaty and the intermediate nuclear forces treaty, respectively.

Only two agreements remain in place, the non-proliferation treaty and the New START agreement limiting the number of nuclear warheads and employed intercontinental ballistic missiles. The latter agreement was negotiated by U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2010. However, Putin in 2023 suspended Russian participation in the treaty but stated Russia would continue to abide by the treaty’s limits.

For those of us in the United States faced with making a choice in a presidential election in fewer than eight weeks, we must weigh whose hand should be on the nuclear trigger. That former president Donald Trump is erratic and prone to making ill-thought emotional decisions is apparent even to his supporters. Only those who ignore the nuclear danger or are so angry they don’t care what happens to people could want Trump to oversee U.S. use of nuclear weapons.

In her debate with Trump, Vice President Kamala Harris showed herself to be calm, knowledgeable, and sensible. She evinces not anger against her enemies but empathy for those in need and a willingness to be a president for all.

Progressives are disappointed that the Biden Administration continues to provide arms to Israel despite the continuing genocide in Gaza, the protests by many thousands around the country, and the support by the public in both the U.S. and Israel for a ceasefire and hostage deal.

Some progressives may withhold their vote from Harris because of Gaza, but while Biden and Harris give lip service to the concerns of the uncommitted movement within the Democratic Party and the peace constituency that is working to end the genocide, Trump evinces not a whit of sympathy for Palestinians. The Republican candidate should gain no votes from supporters of Palestine.

The Ukraine story is more complicated. Harris is part of an administration that took no steps to avoid the Ukraine War and then prevented Ukraine from reaching a negotiated settlement one month into the war. It has supplied Ukraine with over $55 billion in military assistance in hopes of weakening Russia. So far, the administration has avoided a direct confrontation with Russia but the risk of that remains high.

How different is Trump’s Ukraine policy? In the debate between Harris and Trump, ABC News moderator David Muir pressed Trump to speak out for a Ukrainian victory. It’s “a very simple question. Do you want Ukraine to win this war?” Trump refused to give a direct answer and instead declared, “I want the war to stop. I want to save lives.”

Trump coupled his peace declaration by greatly exaggerating the loss of lives, stating that “people [were] being killed by the millions.” Given this misstatement and Trump’s general unwillingness to assimilate accurate information, can one take seriously his wish to be seen as a peace candidate? Not if one considers his willingness to see Israel eliminate the Palestinian population.

A number of Republican members of Congress have questioned continued funding for the Ukraine War. On July 29, 2024, the Pew Research Center found that “a 62% majority of Republicans say the United States does not have a responsibility to help Ukraine defend itself from Russia’s invasion.” Moreover, Pew reported that 48 percent of Republicans say the U.S. is providing too much aid.

Before examining how Trump and his vice-presidential running mate J.D. Vance are proposing to end the Ukrainian war, we need to look in more detail at the positions of Biden and Harris and the historical context for their views and policies.

In criticizing Trump on Ukraine in their debate, Harris relied on old cold war shibboleths. “If Donald Trump were president, Putin would be sitting in Kyiv right now. And understand what that would mean. Because Putin's agenda is not just about Ukraine. Understand why the European allies and our NATO allies are so thankful that you are no longer president and that we understand the importance of the greatest military alliance the world has ever known, which is NATO.”

Trump calls Harris a Marxist and a Communist and Harris calls Trump a Putin supporter. The old anti-communist and anti-Russia scares do not lead to critical thinking about how to improve our lives.

What is the nature of the NATO alliance? The alliance was formed in 1949 supposedly to prevent Soviet aggression in Europe. Its real purpose was to buttress U.S. economic and political domination of Western Europe.

Far from being a defensive alliance against Soviet or Russian expansionism, NATO is, as Noam Chomsky puts it, the “most violent, aggressive alliance in the world.” After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, U.S. promises not to expand NATO eastward were broken by President Bill Clinton and subsequent presidents. NATO has been involved in attacks on Yugoslavia, Libya, and Afghanistan.

NATO member states today include the former Soviet republics of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, as well as several former Soviet allies such as Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic. Viewing the addition of Ukraine to NATO as an existential threat to its security, Russia sought to reach an agreement with the U.S. on Ukrainian neutrality. When the U.S. failed to respond, Russia launched an invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Early in the war, the Biden Administration expanded sanctions against Russia and President Biden stated Putin “cannot remain in power.” The Chinese Ambassador to Malta, Yu Duhai, remarked at the time that Biden’s comment “reveals the true intentions of the US on Ukraine war, namely killing 3 birds with 1 stone: -a regime change -a much weakened Russia -a more dependent Europe."

Only one of the three objectives outlined by the Chinese Ambassador have come to pass. European states, despite their own economic interests, joined in the anti-Russia campaign. They stopped purchasing natural gas from Russia, and instead became depend on more expensive U.S. energy sources. Food prices rose. Can the economic gains to U.S. corporations justify the continued deaths in Ukraine?

The realist scholar of diplomatic relations John Mearsheimer characterizes the Biden Administration approach to the Ukraine Was as “delusional.” The recent Ukrainian incursion into the Kursk region of Russia pulled troops away from the eastern front and weakened Ukraine’s position there.

The delusion referred to by Mearsheimer is the notion that Ukraine can prevail in the current conflict. Russia is winning the war. The Ukrainians are successful only in controlling the narrative in the U.S. and Europe, not on the battlefields. The Russians control the air and have decisive superiority in artillery and manpower. They occupy about 20 percent of Ukrainian territory, more if one includes Crimea, incorporated into the Russian Federation as the Republic of Crimea in 2014 after the overthrow of the Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych.

Economist Jeffrey Sachs, a world leader in sustainable development, comments that the overthrow of Yanukovych “was a standard CIA-led covert regime change operation, of which there have been several dozen around the world, including sixty-four episodes between 1947 and 1989.” Sachs noted recently; “Thirty years ago, Ukraine was embraced by America’s neoconservatives, who believed that it was the perfect instrument for weakening Russia. The neocons are the ideological believers in American hegemony, that is, the right and responsibility of the U.S. to be the world’s sole superpower and global policeman.”

Although U.S. officials and the U.S. media act as if the war started with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, it truly began in 2014 with large-scale fighting between the new Ukrainian government and the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics in eastern Ukraine. The Minsk agreements among Russia, Ukraine, France and Germany in 2014 and 2015 led to a reduction in fighting but the compromise solution that envisioned autonomy for the eastern regions was never implemented.

How different is Trump’s approach to Ukraine? Would he be likely to produce an end to the war as he promises?

Vance suggested a peace deal that would include Ukraine retaining its sovereignty but it would be neutral and would not join NATO or “some of these allied institutions.”

There would be a "heavily fortified so the Russians don't invade again." Vance said he believes Trump will be able to "come to a deal very quickly" because "they're scared of him in Russia” and “worried about him in Europe.”

Trump said in the debate with Biden that if reelected, he would end the war in Ukraine even before he took office again. However, when CNN moderator Dana Bash described Putin’s conditions as keeping “the territory Russia has already claimed and Ukraine abandons its bid to join NATO,” and asked if this were acceptable to him, Trump said no.

Bash is right that Russia views the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions and the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics as part of the Russian Federation. However, some of Putin’s and other Russian representatives’ statements on negotiations have been more forthcoming. In April 2024, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov stated that the abortive 2022 agreement reached in Turkey could be the basis for negotiations.

"Are we ready to negotiate with them? We have never refused to do so," Putin said on September 5, 2024, at the Eastern Economic Forum. "However, not on the basis of some ephemeral demands, but on the basis of the documents that were agreed upon and inked in Istanbul." Tass reported that the March 2022 tentative agreement included “Ukraine’s obligations on a neutral non-aligned status and the rejection of stationing foreign arms, including nuclear ones, on its territory.”

Trump appears to be relying on the force of his personality and his absolute superiority to both Biden and Harris as the basis for negotiating an end to the Ukraine war. Vance offers specifics that Victoria Nuland, the State Department official who was the architect of the 2014 coup in Ukraine, characterizes as a “great gift” to Putin. However, Vance, too, is relying on Trump’s personal power.

The truth is that there a great potential for negotiations to end the Ukraine war no matter who wins the election. Though Harris is positioning herself as a hardliner on Ukraine and Trump as détente-oriented, it may be that the time is ripe for a settlement as soon as the election is over. The likely alternative is an even greater loss of territory by Ukraine and a frozen conflict.

There are many reasons to keep Trump out of the White House – his anti-immigrant and racist rants, his misogyny, his threat to democratic, labor, and reproductive rights, his promise to be a dictator, his full backing of the Israeli genocide in Gaza, his erratic nature, the danger of trusting him with the authority to use nuclear weapons. It would be foolish to rely on his positive statements about ending the Ukraine War. And even if one were to accept them as sincere (a dubious proposition) it would not be enough to earn a peace person’s vote.

http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/73648

Additional Sources

Biden-Trump presidential debate transcript, CNN, June 28, 2024, <https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/27/politics/read-biden-trump-debate-rush-transcript/index.html>

Harris-Trump presidential debate transcript, ABC News, September 10, 2024.
< https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/harris-trump-presidential-debate-transcript/story?id=113560542>

Rajan Menon, “The Clinton-era blunder that set the stage for today's Ukrainian crisis,”

Responsible Statecraft, Feb 13, 2022. < https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2022/02/13/the-clinton-era-blunder-that-set-the-stage-for-todays-ukrainian-crisis/>

President of Russia Vladimir Putin’s speech at the meeting with senior staff of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Moscow, June 14, 2024.

< https://mid.ru/en/foreign_policy/news/1957107/>

Putin Interview with Dmitry Kiselev, March 13, 2024,

Humanitarian Pauses, Protests, and a General Strike in Israel

Martin Halpern — Mon, 02 Sep 2024 01:02:54 GMT

Is there a ray of hope at last for Palestinians in Gaza and peace activists worldwide who have been advocating a permanent ceasefire, an end to the war, and justice for the Palestinian people? Activists in the uncommitted movement were unsuccessful in their push for a speaker at the Democratic National Convention and a change in U.S. policy that would include cutting off military aid, but their protest may have had an effect.

Thanks in part to pressure from Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, the United Nations succeeded in negotiating a humanitarian pause so that the people of Gaza can be vaccinated against polio. Hamas and Israel agreed to a pause in the fighting to allow the vaccination campaign to proceed. The Israeli government said it would implement three-day pauses in the war, first in central Gaza, then in the South, then in the North. Vaccinations began on Sunday September 1.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization, declared: “We welcome the commitment to humanitarian pauses in specific areas, and suspension of evacuation orders for the implementation of the campaign. But the only lasting medicine is peace. The only way to fully protect all the children of Gaza is a ceasefire.”

Sunday was also the day that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) announced that they recovered the bodies of the six hostages from a tunnel in Gaza overnight. The Hostages and Missing Families Forum called for protests Sunday. The organization blasted the Israeli government. The Times of Israel reported their reaction: “If it weren’t for the saboteurs, the excuses, and the spin, the hostages whose deaths we learned of this morning would probably be alive, . . Netanyahu: Enough with the excuses. Enough with the spin. Enough with the abandonment. The time has come to bring our hostages home — those living for rehabilitation and the fallen and murdered for burial in their land.”

Among those calling for street protests were Farhan al-Qadi, a hostage rescued last Tuesday, and Gil Dickmann, a cousin of one of the hostages whose bodies were just recovered. Al-Qadi called on people to “do everything — demonstrations, everything — to get the people home.” Calling on people to take to the streets, Dickmann declared, “The nightmare came true. It was in our hands. Get out of your homes to stop the next murder.”

On Saturday and Sunday, protests took place throughout the country as Israelis demanded both a deal to release the hostages and immediate elections. Protesters, including relatives of the hostages, blocked roads and demonstrated outside the homes of government ministers.

Israeli students headed back to school on Sunday, but a teachers strike delayed the return to school of most high school students. The Israeli government backtracked on last year’s agreement with the Secondary Schools Teachers Association, stating the war meant the government lacked the money to pay the teachers the agreed raises. The union called a strike both to gain the promised wages and a new collective agreement. The government says it wants teachers to sign individual contracts, a union-busting approach familiar to unionists in the United States.

In issuing an appeal for a general strike on Monday, Histadrut Chairman Arnon Bar-David called for entire country to come to a standstill and “unite in a shared cry to bring the hostages back.” Bar-David stated: “All the heads of the security establishment support the deal, and it is the government’s responsibility to bring our hostages home. It is inconceivable that our children will not return because of narrow considerations and interests.” The trade union leader was probably alluding to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s prioritizing his own political survival and staying out of jail. Netanyahu has until now successfully sabotaged a ceasefire and hostage return agreement.

Israeli forces have killed over 40,000 Palestinians in Gaza, starvation and disease are spreading, and there are attacks by the military and settlers on Palestinians in the West Bank as well. Israelis are suffering, too. Bar-David warned: “The situation in the country is deteriorating from bad to worse. Abandonment is the key word, and we see its damage in all areas. Abandonment of hostages, abandonment of Israelis uprooted from their homes, abandonment in security, abandonment in education, and abandonment in the economy. . . . I am not telling anyone anything new when I talk about the cost-of-living crisis and the housing crisis. We will see a mass economic collapse here.”

The Communist Party of Israel reported on the one U.S.-born individual among the hostages whose bodies were just recovered: “One of them is Hersh Goldberg-Polin who was born in California and immigrated to Israel from the United States in 2008, when he was about seven years old. Goldberg-Polin celebrated his birthday four days before the start of the war. He was a fan of the Hapoel Jerusalem basketball and soccer teams, a familiar face at Jerusalem’s Teddy Stadium and Arena a member of the Brigade Malcha fan club and participated in several activities led by Young Communists in Jerusalem.”

The current protests in Israel are gaining attention in the U.S. mass media. A minority of Israelis have been protesting for a ceasefire and hostage return for many months. There is a chance now that the hostage families and the peace forces within Israel may finally prevail. Those of us who have been protesting the genocide in Gaza should renew our demand that our government finally use all its political and diplomatic resources to immediately bring this war to an end.

Is Communism an Issue in the 2024 Election?

Martin Halpern — Sun, 25 Aug 2024 19:54:02 GMT

Donald Trump launched a new attack on Kamala Harris on Saturday August 17. He declared: “In her speech yesterday, Kamala went full communist,” he said. “Comrade Kamala announced that she wants to institute socialist price controls. You saw that never worked before … it will cause rationing, hunger and skyrocketing prices.” In addition to calling Harris a Communist, Trump on August 19, 2024, blasted Harris’s father, as a “Marxist professor.”

Trump’s use of the terms “Communist,” “Comrade,” and “Marxist” against Harris and her father are nothing new. I’ll elaborate on that in a moment, but first let’s look at Harris’s economic ideas and what to make of Trump’s critique of them and of his alternative policies.

Harris’s Economic Proposals and Trump’s Ideas

The Harris campaign is not proposing price controls but rather "the first-ever federal ban on price gouging on food and groceries" and a “crack down on unfair mergers and acquisitions that give big food corporations the power to jack up food and grocery prices and undermine the competition that allows all businesses to thrive while keeping prices low for consumers.”

Democrats have a long history of rhetorical opposition to monopolies. They moved away from that impetus during the Clinton years, a period that saw significant deregulation of corporations. In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, Elizabeth Warren’s vision led to the establishment of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Since its establishment in 2011, according to director Rohit Chopra, the agency “has returned $20.7 billion to consumers through law enforcement activity.” In 2021, President Biden issued an executive order affirming that the policy of his administration was “to enforce the antitrust laws to combat the excessive concentration of industry, the abuses of market power, and the harmful effects of monopoly and monopsony.” Thus far, the administration succeeded in lowering drug prices for Medicare recipients.

In our corporate-dominated economy, government action to provide price relief is popular with consumers. As with so many other issues, Trump is using negative labels and false generalizations to scare voters away from considering his rival’s ideas. In this environment, contemplation of more radical ideas such as nationalizing companies that dominate their industry are off the table.

The Harris campaign is recommending new help to renters and first-time home buyers. It calls for “construction of 3 million new housing units in the next four years, outlines actions for creating a fairer rental market, and proposes $25,000 in downpayment support for first-time homeowners.” Far from being a socialist or communist goal, this is a very modest proposal. According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, “there is a shortage of more than 7 million affordable homes for our nation's 10.8 million plus extremely low-income families.” Those families are not the only ones in need of affordable homes. What about moderate income workers, the young people living with parents who would like a home of their own, and the new families that will come into being over the next four years? The shortage of affordable housing is a big part of the reason that 580,000 people are homeless “on any given night.” A housing expert I consulted put the current total need for new housing units at 15 million.

What is Trump’s position on housing? Fortune magazine describes his record as president as supporting suburbanites’ NIMBY -- not in my backyard -- preference. His current approach to housing includes another feature from his presidency, the creation of Opportunity Zones with tax incentives to spur investment with little regulation. Few of the past projects assisted low-income individuals’ housing needs.[1]

Although Harris is not proposing price controls, it is worth noting that Trump has it exactly wrong. Price controls are not socialist, but have, in fact, been used several times in U.S. history to address inflation in the capitalist economy. Price controls were especially effective during World War II thanks to the participation of many thousands of consumers in monitoring prices. During that period, near full employment, strong unions, and price controls produced an increase in real wages.

There is a quarter-truth in Trump’s anti-communist rant on price controls. When countries have socialist economies, housing is affordable, subsidized, and rent controlled. In the U.S., the often left-led working-class tenants’ groups have played important roles in campaigns for rent control. In an essay entitled “‘Universal Rent Control’ Is the Left-Wing Dream That’s Actually Happening,” Ankita Rao describes both successes such as the recent passage of legislation in Oregon as well as the challenges tenant activists face.[2]

On issues other than housing and price gouging, the Harris approach offers some benefits for working people. The Democratic platform calls for an increase in the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour, an expanded child tax credit and passage of several pro-union laws including the PRO Act and the Public Service Freedom to Negotiate Act. They also favor increasing taxes on the wealthy and corporations. Whether such measures get implemented will depend on whether Democrats get a working liberal majority in Congress and grass roots mobilization to support such measures.

Trump’s economic policies, on the other hand, emphasize increased tariffs and shifting the tax burden from the rich and corporations to the rest of the population. Project 2025, the plan Trump’s allies have prepared for the new administration, proposes cutting the corporate tax rate, imposing a national consumer tax, gutting National Labor Relations Board enforcement of the country’s labor laws, and abolishing the Consumer Protection Financial Board.

The differences between the domestic policy agendas of the two parties are clearcut. The Republicans’ approach favors more power to the rich and the corporations. The Democrats put forward proposals of benefit to working people. Trump’s authoritarian aspirations, moreover, mean his reelection threatens the limited freedom working people have to make their own decisions about their personal and family lives and to pursue collective action to advance their interests.

Trump’s Red-Baiting

Trump’s name-calling against those who he wishes to disparage is not new nor is his use of the communist label. In a speech in Columbus, Georgia on June 10, 2023, Trump claimed: “We’re right at the tipping point. Now we are leaning toward deep state but [the term] deep state isn’t strong enough. it’s really a Communist, Marxist country.” Apparently forgetting that the U.S. in his view was already a Communist country, Trump declared two weeks later at the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s conference: “We’re going to keep foreign, Christian-hating communists, Marxists and socialists out of America.”

Austin Sarat provides an insightful analysis of how and why Trump came to rely on anti-communism in a 2023 essay in Politico. Trump learned the effectiveness of red-baiting and bulltying tactics from his mentor Roy Cohn, chief counsel on Joseph McCarthy’s Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Sarat explains that Trump has been labelling opponents as Communists and Socialists since he entered the political arena in 2015 and attacked Senator Bernie Sanders as a ““a socialist-slash-communist ... He’s going to tax you people at 90 percent; he’s going to take everything!” As Sarat explains, “He wants his followers to fear what the people and institutions he calls communist will do to those who don’t share their world view — including to the former president himself.”

Communism and Socialism

There are many varieties of socialism and communism. Trump, of course, is not attempting to provide a critique of any version of either ideology or system but rather to stir fear in a public that continues to see and read anti-communist stories in the mainstream media and in outlets funded by right-wing billionaires. He also relies on the receptivity of two specific groups: Americans brought up during the cold war red scare and immigrants and their descendants who had negative experiences in Communist-led countries.

The most maligned socialists and communists are those in Communist-led countries that brought the biggest changes in the lives of millions of people, providing guaranteed jobs, low-cost housing, comprehensive health care, and free education from the primary grade through college and professional schools.

That there are divisions today within the communist movement and between socialists and communists is a consequence of past debates and an increasingly diverse and complex world with a previously unimagined gap between the rich and the rest of the population. I recently came across a short early work by Frederick Engels, Karl Marx’s partner, that has some worthwhile ideas and advice still relevant today.

In the Principles of Communism, written in October or November 1847, Engels discusses the differences between democratic socialists and communists and the possibility of the two groups working together. Engels notes that:

“democratic socialists . . . favor some of the same measures the communists advocate . . . not as part of the transition to communism, however, but as measures which they believe will be sufficient to abolish the misery and evils of present-day society.

“These democratic socialists are either proletarians who are not yet sufficiently clear about the conditions of the liberation of their class, or they are representatives of the petty bourgeoisie, a class which, prior to the achievement of democracy and the socialist measures to which it gives rise, has many interests in common with the proletariat.

“It follows that, in moments of action, the communists will have to come to an understanding with these democratic socialists, and in general to follow as far as possible a common policy with them – provided that these socialists do not enter into the service of the ruling bourgeoisie and attack the communists.-“It is clear that this form of co-operation in action does not exclude the discussion of differences.”

Engels was here describing a version of what in the 1930s the Communist movement called for: a united front (of working-class parties) and a popular front (an alliance of all democratic groups opposed to fascism).

Once again, today we need a popular front in our country, a front to oppose the threat to individual rights, unions, and democracy represented by the far-right Trumpist Republican Party. At the same time, this popular front needs to represent the humanistic impulses of the majority that opposes imperialism and acts in solidarity with the oppressed of the world. Today, this means especially ending the genocide in Gaza.

Communists and left-wing socialists within the popular front will promote a socialist world view – political power to the working class, nationalization of the commanding heights of the economy, and an economy planned to meet the needs of all, especially poor and working people, those unable to work and retirees, and the children.

Notes

[1]. National Low Income Housing Coaltion, “Harris Campaign Releases Plans to Lower Housing Costs,” august 19, 2024, https://nlihc.org/resource/harris-campaign-releases-plans-lower-housing-costs accessed August 22, 2024;“Trump Rally in North Carolina,” August 15, 2024, < https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/trump-rally-in-north-carolina> accessed August 22, 2024; PBS Newshour, “Trump-era Opportunity Zones meant to help low-income communities exploited by investors,” November 11, 2021, <https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/trump-era-opportunity-zones-meant-to-help-low-income-communities-exploited-by-investors> accessed August 22, 2024.

[2]. Ronald Lawson and Mark D. Naison, The Tenant Movement in New York City, 1904-1984 (1986). Available from the Internet Archive; Ankita Rao, “‘Universal Rent Control’ Is the Left-Wing Dream That’s Actually Happening,” March 6, 2019, Vice, <https://www.vice.com/en/article/universal-rent-control-is-the-left-wing-dream-thats-actually-happening/> accessed August 23, 2024.

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Harris’s Selection of Tim Walz as Running Mate:

Martin Halpern — Tue, 06 Aug 2024 17:48:08 GMT

Democrats and progressives were, by in large, pleased by President Joe Biden’s withdrawal from his 2024 reelection campaign and the impending nomination of Vice President Kamala Harris to replace him. There was a palpable sense of relief that there was a fighting chance to defeat former president Donald Trump and the existential threat he represents to democracy. However, left-progressives continue to oppose the Biden Administration’s support for the genocide in Gaza and its twin failures to pursue diplomacy to end the war in Ukraine and to return to nuclear arms control.

Some on the left question calling our country a democracy given corporate domination of the media and politics and U.S. interference in overthrowing governments around the world. The danger to the limited democratic rights we have within the U.S. polity is real, however. Recall the January 6, 2021, insurrection, the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade and granting Trump immunity for official acts, and the former president’s statements about being a dictator on day one of a new term and assuring Christians they would not have to vote again after 2024.

Although the threat to democracy at home is real, left critics, peace advocates, and establishment scholars like Jeffrey Sachs and John Mearsheimer are correct in seeing U.S. advocacy of democracy abroad as rhetoric without substance. U.S. presidents and their foreign policy advisors have for nearly eighty years sought hegemony for the U.S. and its corporate elite.

A History of Recent U.S. Wars and Interventions

I don’t want to underestimate the difficulty that peace advocates face. Those of us favoring peace and diplomacy have been on a losing streak for decades. Although there have been occasional successes for peace forces, which I’ll return to below, this incomplete list of U.S. decisions for war and military action and against diplomacy is devastating.

Invasion of Panama (1986)
Gulf War (1991)
President Clinton’s decision to expand NATO eastward despite promises to the Soviet Union and post-Soviet Russia that we would not do so. (1993-94 and ongoing thereafter by successive presidents)
Bombing of Yugoslavia (1998)
U.S. withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (2002)
The invasions of Afghanistan (2001) and Iraq (2003).
Intervention in Libya and overthrow of its government (2011)
Overthrow of Ukrainian government (2014)
Failure to implement the Minsk agreements on Ukraine (2014-15)
U.S. pulls out of Iran nuclear deal (2018)
U.S. withdraws from intermediate nuclear missile treaty (2019)
U.S. rejection of Russian offer to negotiate on Ukraine (2021)
U.S. and U.K. scuttle tentative agreement to end fighting in Ukraine (April 2022)
U.S., NATO, and Germany announce (2024) U.S. deployment of “long-range strike capabilities in Germany” starting in 2026

These war-like actions occurred under Democratic and Republican presidents including during the Trump and Biden presidencies.

Victories for Pro-Peace Forces are Possible

The ability of the corporate elite to shape both the general outlook of U.S. foreign policy and specific international issues is great but not absolute. There are several examples of grass roots mobilizations that brought about a shift in U.S. foreign policy. In some cases, grass roots mobilizations moved the Congress and in other cases the mobilizations moved the president. These victories came from diverse sectors of society.

The Roosevelt Era

During the 1930s, two foreign policy goals of President Roosevelt were frustrated by grass roots isolationist opposition. FDR was headed to securing the ratification of U.S. entry into the World Court in 1935. A radio broadcast by Father Charles Coughlin and opposition by the Hearst newspapers led to members of the Senate being inundated with protest messages. The president no longer had the votes to secure ratification of the treaty. Today, we would view this example as an unfortunate retreat from participating in the world community in a positive and peaceful manner. Nevertheless, this is a particularly good example of the public having an impact on government foreign policy decision-making.

Roosevelt was far from being an interventionist in the early to mid-1930s, but the Congress went further in an isolationist direction than the president favored. The investigation by the Nye Committee (the Special Committee on Investigation of the Munitions Industry), increased the already common view that the U.S. should not get into another European war. With an impending attack on Ethiopia by Italy in 1935, there was widespread sentiment in the country for neutrality legislation. Roosevelt sought to secure language which would have given him flexibility in the implementation of the Neutrality Act. He failed to get the freedom he sought.

The Vietnam War Era

Protests against the Vietnam War started with small demonstrations, but mobilizations became massive and eventually the majority of the public opposed the war. The protest movement contributed to President Lyndon Johnson’s decision to begin negotiations and to withdraw from his 1968 reelection campaign. In the wake of the massive October 15, 1969 Moratorium and November 15, 1969 March on Washington, President Richard Nixon reversed a decision to bomb the dikes in North Vietnam and to use tactical nuclear weapons. Soon after, Nixon began the policy of Vietnamization.

Beginning in 1970, the Congress, reflecting public opinion, took action to bring the war to an end. It repealed the Tonkin Gulf Resolution that authorized presidential action in Vietnam and then began using its control of the purse strings to put limits on the fighting. The enormous and unnecessary death and destruction continued for several years, but the U.S. eventually agreed to withdraw its forces in January 1973. The Paris Peace Accords signed by the U.S. and the Vietnamese parties provided for the unification of Vietnam and that “the United States will contribute to healing the wounds of war and to postwar reconstruction of the Democratic Republic of Viet-Nam and throughout Indochina.” The peace advocates in the U.S. played an important role in ending the war.

The Reagan Era

Upon his accession to the presidency, President Ronald Reagan declared his opposition to the Soviet Union and his determination to avoid the negotiations which several of his predecessors had engaged in. Asserting that the Soviets were ahead of the U.S. in nuclear arms capability, Reagan pushed increased military spending, the development of the Strategic Defense Initiative, placing intermediate nuclear missiles in Europe, and aggressive anti-Sovietism. In reaction to these policies, a nuclear freeze movement erupted in the United States with over one million people gathering in Central Park in New York City on June 12, 1982. An anti-missile movement developed in Europe as well. These developments – along with the rise of a new Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev -- led to a reversal of policy by the Reagan Administration and the negotiation of the INF treaty to eliminate a class of nuclear weapons for the first time.

The Iraq War and the War in Syria

Over ten million people worldwide protested the impending invasion of Iraq on February 15, 2003. It was not enough to stop the invasion. Anti-war activists persisted. The invasion was based on the lie that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. A considerable minority of the public opposed the invasion and eventually a majority came to the same view. This reality was a factor in the Democrats’ success in the 2006 mid-term election and in Barack Obama’s victory in the 2008 election.

For his part, President Obama retreated from a plan for a major escalation of U.S. intervention in the Syrian conflict, in part because Congress members, both Democratic and Republican, heard from constituents that they did not want the U.S. to involve our country in another Middle East war.

Gaza and the Ukraine War

The Biden Administration’s conduct of a proxy war in Ukraine and its support for Israel’s genocidal war against Gaza are failing policies. Not only are the goals of defeating Russia and destroying Hamas unattainable, but the administration is also risking nuclear confrontation in one conflict and a general Mideast war in the other. Neither of these policies is popular with the public, but grass roots mobilization has focused on ending the genocide in Gaza. Although the majority of the U.S. public does not yet view Israel’s actions as constituting genocide, a large majority wants to see a permanent ceasefire in Gaza. Biden has on more than one occasion spoken in favor of a ceasefire, but he has refrained from using the United States’ power as Israel’s arms supplier and diplomatic protector to force a change in Israel’s behavior.

Harris’s Selection of Tim Walz

Democratic constituencies’ enthusiasm for Harris’s candidacy has led to volunteering, contributions to her campaign, and favorable responses by the public as a whole as reflected in public opinion polling. Trump’s selection of J.D. Vance as his running mate has proved to be a major glitch in his campaign. Would Harris’s choice of a vice-presidential running mate also be problematical for the Democrats?

The selection of Philadelphia as the site for Harris’s first appearance with her running mate made it seem that Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro had the inside track. On August 2, 2024, Axios reported that “White House, campaign and party sources” say “all signs point” to Shapiro. Pollster Nate Silver declared that Shapiro was the smartest choice because of Pennsylvania’s status as the most important swing state. However, Shapiro’s support for dismantling the pro-Palestinian encampment at the University of Pennsylvania was among several of the governor’s actions causing concern among progressives. The movement by supporters of a Gaza ceasefire and Palestinian rights to send uncommitted delegates to the Democratic convention came out strongly against Shapiro.

While pleased that Biden withdrew from the race, spokespeople for the uncommitted movement, which attracted 700,000 votes in Democratic primaries, want Harris to support an embargo on arms to Israel as a way of securing a permanent ceasefire. The selection of Tim Walz as her vice-presidential pick seems to indicate that Harris is listening to progressives, peace voters, and the uncommitted movement. Walz praised the uncommitted movement as “civically engaged.” As Business Insider put it, “Harris hands progressives a major victory by selecting Gov. Tim Walz as her VP.” Elianne Farhat, of the Uncommitted movement, praised Walz as a leader who has evolved on issues like gun control but that “it's crucial he continues this evolution by supporting an arms embargo on Israel's war and occupation against Palestinians in an effort to unite our party to defeat authoritarianism in the fall." Peace voters need to keep up their focus on the issue of ending the genocide in Gaza as well advocating a shift in U.S. foreign policy generally from war to diplomacy.