Tidbits – Mar. 02, 2023 – Reader Comments: Peace Movement Now?; Centrality of Black-White Unity; Roberto Clementine Book Restored; Ukrainian War – Differing Perspectives; Honoring Pathbreakers-Celebrating International Women’s Day; Resources; More

Reader Comments: Peace Movement-Then, Now?; Lessons from History-Centrality of Black-white unity; Roberto Clementine Book Restored; Ukrainian War - Differing Perspectives on the Left; Honoring Pathbreakers-Celebrating International Women's Day

Portside
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Tidbits - Reader Comments, Resources, Announcements, AND cartoons - Mar. 02, 2023,Portside

Ukrainian War - Differing Views, Differing Perspectives

Resources:

 

Honoring Pathbreakers  -  Honoring Women  -  Celebrating International Women's Day March 8

 

Announcements:

 

Re: 20 Years Ago, the World Said No to War

I remember marching with 1 1/2 million people and my family filling the streets of Manhattan on February 15, 2003, in opposition to the Iraq War.  As Phyllis Bennis points out, we did not stop the War that our rulers (led by George Dubya Bush) were bent on pursuing.  But we laid the basis, when the WMD (weapons of mass destruction) were found to be a myth and Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with September 11th, for turning our country against the War.

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What I am afraid of, if the Republicans win the presidency in 2024, they will crush opposition to the next imperial war, much like in the 19teens and 1920s.  We need to build grassroots anti war sentiment.

Lew Grupper

      =====

I have different memories of the February 2003 antiwar demonstration in New York. Mayor Michael Bloomberg had police block off the area in front of the United Nations, so most of the hundreds of thousands of people who turned out never got anywhere near the rally, because we were penned up on various blocks on Manhattan's East Side.

Bloomberg as mayor was worse on civil liberties than Rudolph Giuliani was, although that comparison is distorted by circumstances. Giuliani would have been much worse if he had been able to use 9/11 as an excuse.

Steven Wishnia

      =====

Serious question i think should be addressed:
When 20 years ago we saw the largest worldwide  demonstrations against war in our generations, the warmakers paid no attention and went right about their business.  So what conclusions should we draw from that?

Karen Lee Wald

      =====

And yet, war still drives the world economy

James Rodriguez
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

      =====

This came to me as a targeted ad.
I’m passing it along because I think it’s an interesting experiment in left-leaning news sharing.

Kat Tanaka Okopnik
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

      =====

Oil wars of terror continue

Terry O'Brien
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

Re: The GOP’s Grand Immigration Con Job  

It's unfortunate that Portside would repost Thom Hartmann's article, "The GOP's Grand Immigration Con Job" without at least some response.  Hartmann has been making the same nativist defense of employer sanctions, the weapon used to make it illegal for an undocumented person to have a job, for many years.  His article professes to attack Republicans, but it actually attacks undocumented workers. 

While he puts quotes around the phrase "illegal" immigrants, he uses the same racist tropes he's used for years.  His claim is that "when the jobs dry up, the immigrants just stop coming" - an argument that says that if it becomes illegal for undocumented workers to work because a law forbids employers from hiring them, that the migration of people will stop.  This is factually ridiculous on its face, since immigration law has made it illegal to hire undocumented workers since 1986, and millions of people have come to the U.S. without papers since then. 

Hartmann even claims that the law that created this form of illegality made it easier and more legal for employers to hire undocumented workers.  He says, "It started in 1986, when Ronald Reagan decided to stop enforcing the laws against wealthy white employers hiring undocumented people," and claims the 1986 law "made it harder to prosecute employers who invited undocumented workers into their workplaces."  The law Reagan signed in 1986, the Immigration Reform and Control Act, was actually the first immigration law that made it a crime for undocumented people to work and for employers to hire them. 

Hartmann's misstatements of history include the claim, made by many nativists, that this provision of the law penalizing undocumented workers was suppossedly not enforced.  Because of that "the next 20 years saw a collapse of American citizens working in both the meatpacking and construction industries, made it harder to prosecute employers who invited undocumented workers into their workplaces."  Saying the law wasn't enforced is not only untrue, but ignores the firings of thousands of undocumented workers since 1986, the enormous suffering caused to them and their families, and the use of these firings and the threat of them to break organizing efforts time and time again. 

This is just one of Hartmann's many factual errors.  In another he has President Eisenhower starting the bracero program (which actually started in 1942).  This kind of guest worker program that Hartmann advocates treated the workers involved as heavily exploited farm laborers, and put them into competition with the farmworkers already here, while the government at the same time deported up to a million people each year. 

To Hartmann, undocumented workers themselves are responsible for the breaking of unions and the lowering of wages, an argument he made overtly in his book "Rebooting the American Dream."  He sees undocumented people simply as passive exploited victims, and ignores the courageous actions by thousands of workers without papers to organize unions, and fight in defense of their rights and culture in the face of racism and brutality.  Instead, they are simply the enemy.  This kind of pitting of workers against each other leads to race and nationality-based hatred, and is one of the biggest obstacles to the ability of workers to unite and fight back.

Hartmann defends the decision by the Biden administration to keep Title 42 in place, illegally using the pandemic as the excuse to refuse to allow migrants at the U.S. border to apply for asylum and refugee status.  Instead, it's somehow Republicans saying that the border is "open" that supposedly attracts migrants to come:   "But literally hundreds of Republican politicians, just like they do every two years, have spent the two-plus years since Biden’s inauguration proclaiming to every despairing potential refugee south of our border that the door is wide open."  This is beyond a ridiculous falsification of history.  It provides political cover to the administration in breaking Biden's pre-election promises, and its continuation of one of the most notorious of Trump's anti-immigrant policies.

The problem, for Hartmann, is that too many immigrants are coming.  "Immigration that’s too rapid or comes in waves invariably produces a local and typically racist/xenophobic backlash."  Not a word in his article about the actions by the U.S., particularly under Democratic administrations, that have forced people to leave home -  the trade agreements like NAFTA and CAFTA, or the military interventions that support this pro-corporate policy. 

Hartmann's book, Rebooting the American Dream, has a whole chapter making the same claims.  It condemned those in the labor movement who sought to repeal laws making work a crime for the undocumented, and who supported amnesty for undocumented people.  I reviewed it for In These Times.  Maybe you should post it too.

David Bacon

Nationalize the Rails  --  meme

Re: A Call for One-Party Authoritarian Rule  

It’s a call for the “red states” to become a very poor nation.

Norm Littlejohn
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

      =====

Where's General Sherman when we need him?

Eleanor Roosevelt
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

A New Woke  --  cartoon by Mike Luckovich

Mike Luckovich
March 1, 2023
Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Re: Eight Lessons From Bernie Sanders’s New Book  

I love this clarity. I know you were very hesitant about support for Bernie in a presidential run, it is extremely problematic. Having said that, is there another candidate that will emerge with this political, framework and understanding? someone who commands the respect an audience that he does?

Denise R Young

      =====

As good as Bernie is compared to all the other Senators, there is apparently nothing in his book about U.S. imperialism, it's perpetual wars, or the U.S. military industrial complex, which are the scourges of the earth.

Jonathan Nack
Cuenca, Ecuador

Re: The Great Slave Strike That Helped End Slavery  

There is no mention of Dubois or Black Reconstruction in America.  Dubois highlighted what he called the Great General Strike of the African slaves.

Bill Fletcher

      =====

This article about the Great Slave Strike is appreciated but "walked off their jobs" is a twisted distorted  statements about enslavement -that cruel, genocidal, institution of forced labor. Not a job!! It is irresponsible to print those lines. 

Diana J. Fox, PhD
University Director
Institute for Gender and Development Studies
Regional Coordinating Office
The University of the West Indies

      =====

Did you forget the role of revolutionary Haiti? Haiti's 1804 revolution was finally recognized as a nation in 1862 by Lincoln who also ended a U.S. trade embargo. Haiti had inspired the Nate Turner rebellion.

Marty Goodman

Re: Abraham Lincoln Is a Hero of the Left  

I understand why there is a felt need by many—especially Euro-Americans of the left—to identify with the US project.  Still, how could an analysis of the perception of Lincoln by progressives ignore the fierce intervention by the late Lerone Bennett, one of the most prominent Black Public Intellectuals from his perch at EBONY magazine?  He excoriated the 16th US President for, inter alia, seeking to deport African Americans en masse; we barely escaped that plot—allowing Lincoln to “evolve”.   Bennett could have focused on mass executions of Indigenes and how the Civil War accelerated their dispossession.  I do not find it coincidental that Bennett was a journalist for some of the most important historiographical interventions have come from Black reporters—see Nikole Hannah Jones—as the structure of training for professional historians often leads to an intellectual and political straitjacket.

Gerald Horne

Race/white southern workers  

Varon's book on Civil War has some important insights on origins of idea that white workers of South are also victims of a white oligarchy -- that it goes back not just to Marx, but to the Abolitionist movement.

Kevin B. Anderson

    Democracy and the White Working Class vs. “Oligarchy” in the South
    by Kevin B. Anderson
    February 20, 2023
    Hollywood Progressive      

The U.S. freedom road is long and winding, and people dedicated to the struggle have been traveling it for many decades now.

"Elizabeth Varon’s book, Armies of Deliverance: A New History of the Civil War, has just come to my attention, although it was published four years ago, in 2019. Whether intentionally or not, the book gives important illumination to Marxist debates over race, class, and slavery. And a briefer level, it also offers new insights the origins of fascist and right-wing populist movements in the U.S."
 - Kevin B. Anderson (Hollywood Progressive

Re: Breaking Up (With China) Is Hard To Do

A perfect parable of how to get ensnared to the point of no escape through one's greed. I guess the last laugh will be China's

Mike Liston

      =====

What a load of xenophobic silliness. Articles attacking Russia, Iran, Cuba and Venezuela to follow. One big China hater I know used to be a Japan hater, and easily switched. Same slogans and arguments. How's this, some American companies make most of their profits in China selling to Chinese people. If the Chinese did like the author wants Americans to do, a whole buncha American companies will go under. Secondly made in China is just a label, the Chinese may assemble goods with parts from Malaysia (well the US hates them, do we even know where it is), Indonesia (same), Thailand (ditto) and so on. Hatred is a terrible thing. I expect to see writing like this in the Washington Post or New York Post, not on Portside. Please someone tell me what is "left" about this?

Charles Patrick Lynch

      =====

This seems to be a very reactionary anti-Chinese article. "Containing China"? The real problem is containing the United States. Why did Portside publicize this horrible article?

John Gilbert
University of Florence
Florence, Italy

Re: “We Basically Nuked a Town With Chemicals”: East Palestine Volunteers Risk Mass Toxic Exposure  

This what we mean by capitalism kills. From toxic waste and chemicals to crumbling infrastructure like water lines poisoning people, to the exploitation and abuse of bodies for profit.

Jennifer Watson
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

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I understand the need to protect individuals by Corporate responsibility when a legitimate mistake is made or some other unknown happens.

However, this SHOULD NOT APPLY to conscious decisions by knowledgeable (or should be knowledgeable) decision-makers. They have no right to decide what "risks" are appropriate and what the statistics are behind those risks when dealing with anyone other than themselves. Responsibility should not just be on the company; there must be criminal, along with financial, responsibility against decision-makers who just don't give a damn about anyone else.

We know we have decision-makers that decide their own increases in wealth are worth the lives of all residents of some other countries; why would we be surprised that they don't feel the same way about the "lesser" humans in their own communities, especially the ones they don't even live in.

I never considered myself a Marxist, but more and more his predictions on the future of Capitalism, on its way to total Fascism (did he even have that word?) is right on target. It's interesting how the "Corporatist" aspects of businesses providing for their employees are referred to as "Socialist" as if they were on their way to a "Communist" future.

NOTE: My quotes around financial system words in that last paragraph indicate that there are no real definitions we can all agree with. When people use those words, I always ask them to define them.

Arlene Halfon

Trump's New Lunch Buddy  --  cartoon by Clay Jones

Clay Jones
February 28, 2023
claytoonz

Re: Roberto Clemente Book Removed From Florida Public Schools

FLORIDA (KDKA) - A children's book about Roberto Clemente is being returned to school library shelves in Florida. 

Last year, Duval County schools removed the book "Roberto Clemente: The Pride of the Pittsburgh Pirates" from classrooms.

Full story here  https://www.cbsnews.com/Pittsburgh/news/Roberto-clemente-book-returned-…

KDKA(CBS) Pittsburgh

      =====

Only nutjobs would've thought they had to "review" it in the first place!

Patty Allen
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

      =====

People need to protest this censorship effort by the republicans at every opportunity. Read the books they’ve banned. If you have kids or grand kids, read them the banned kids books.

John Hawksley
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

University of Tennessee at Martin Student Government Condemns Racist anti-CRT Laws

Following a campaign by a campus group, People for Black History, the UT Martin Student Government Association voted to condemn two pieces of white supremacist "education" laws enacted in Tennessee -- the anti-CRT law of 2021 and the divisive concepts law of 2022. People for Black History continues its campaign and is attempting to get the University's Faculty Senate to pass a similar resolution.

UTM Martin student government votes in favor of resolution condemning Tennessee's 'anti-CRT laws' as racist

February 23, 2023
WPSD-Local 6 (Paducah, Kentucky)     

The University of Tennessee at Martin's Student Government Association has passed a resolution condemning two Tennessee laws as racist. After debating the issue Thursday night, the SGA resolution passed in a 16-4 vote

A new organization at UTM, People for Black History, has been petitioning for the resolution since the second week of the spring 2023 semester. The group's issue is with Tennessee's passage of the Anti-Critical Race Theory or CRT law of 2021, and the Divisive Concepts Act of 2022. 

Read full story here  

David Barber

Dilbert's new cubicle  --  cartoon by Walt Handelsman

Walt Handelsman
February 28, 2023
Minneapolis Star Tribune

Re: ‘Old-School Union Busting’: How US Corporations Are Quashing the New Wave of Organizing

(posting on Portside Labor)

“ ‘We’re seeing the same situation over and over — workers going up against billionaires and billion-dollar companies with an endless amount of resources while our labor laws are far too weak,’ said Michelle Eisen, a barista in Buffalo who helped lead the early unionization efforts of Starbucks in that city. ‘We’re all fighting for the same thing against different companies. We’re all in the same boat. No one denies that there are a lot of obstacles to overcome.’

“ ‘The labor board is doing its job with the limited resources it has,’ she added. ‘But Starbucks continues to break the law flagrantly.’ The union asserts that Starbucks has engaged in illegal retaliation by firing 150 pro-union baristas and closing a dozen recently unionized stores.

Norm

Re: She Was Once the Biggest Star in Jazz. Here’s Why You’ve Never Heard of Her

(posting on Portside Culture)  

Thanks for the article on Hazel Scott! There is a great short film on her with excellent footage that would be an excellent link for you to share as a follow up to the article. The film is by Eve Goldberg and is on YouTube and I know she'd be happy to have it shared by Portside. 

It's called "Whatever Happened to Hazel Scott?" and the link is https://youtu.be/o_WJ4PpxWaE

Lincoln Bergman

Re: Putin’s Mein Kampf: An Invasion Foretold

It's bad enough reading the war-boosting coverage in the Times every day, but Palast demonizes anyone who wants peace even more than the Times does, which usually just ignores that anyone opposes this war.  The war is caused by more than the views of one man, as powerful as Putin may be, and understanding its causes and what it means to us here in this country is very important in the midst of the current jingoistic atmosphere.  This article doesn't help us to find common ground facing the huge growth in war hysteria, and we desperately need that.

David Bacon

      =====

This is disappointing that one of Portside's editors would choose this article for distribution. The ultra-left, but mostly dogmatic blind support for Russia's invasion can't even use that word, "invasion." On the other hand, here Mr. Palast has abandoned his tools of investigation and analysis that he uses so well exposing voter suppression in Georgia (USA) and elsewhere. The intervention by the U.S. in Ukraine this century has been massive, and was decisive in the overthrow of the government in 2014 and handpicking the replacement, as U.S. ambassador Nuland crowed both publicly and in hacked phone calls. Imagine the Chinese government doing the same in northern Mexico: the U.S. government would consider that an existential threat and do whatever it took to eliminate Chinese sway over Mexico.

T.M. Scruggs
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

      =====

The peace movement is split between those who demand "Russia Out" (like Greg Palast), and those who focus on "Hands Off Russia" (like ANSWER and Code Pink). The second position can't gain traction with the public. This is sometimes for the worst reasons -- Russophobia and military jingoism. But it is most often for the best reason -- it was Putin who chose to invade, and everyone knows it. The US and NATO provoked, maneuvered and manipulated, but the army that crossed the Ukrainian border and blew civilian targets to bits, was Putin's. Putin is the perpetrator of the actual violence in this war, which has been a gift to those in the West who are ginning up the new cold war. 

Ethan Young

      =====

Pretty sad to see a great activist reduced to peddling nonsense.  Palast is clearly reading into the essay and ignoring everything else the Russians did to complain about NATO for the last 20 years.  Any sober analyst will tell you the war was provoked.  That does not justify it, but it does mean one has to understand US motives for prolonging the war to understand why it happened and continues.  It is simply naïve hysterics to believe everything Biden says.  This is as much Biden's war as it is Putin's.

Richard Curtis

      =====

The USA poured millions into the Ukraine before 2014 to help the bloody coup, which Victoria Nuland was manipulating. The Minsk accords were used as a diversion, to give time for building up the Ukrainian forces. This has been admitted now by Angela Merkel and Francois Hollande. The post-coup regime banned the Communist Party, the largest opposition force and neo-Nazis set about intimidating all opposition to them. The Russian language and culture was gradually forced out. The reaction, in Crimea and the Donbass les to Ukraine shelling civilians for 8 years: a UN report in 2020 spoke of the humanitarian crisis there, with over 10,000 civilians killed. Putin acted to protect people with strong historical links to Russia, speakers of Russian. Do they have no rights, do not exist? All sides are losing - the Ukrainian and Russian peoples, the European economies - except for the USA, especially the arms industry. Extreme nationalists in the Ukraine are being used to prolong the war. Prospects of negotiations last April were stopped when Boris Johnson (then the UK Prime Minister) went to Kyiv and told Zelensky to stop them. The geopolitics are clear: US imperialism wants to prolong the war to destroy or gravely weaken Russia, weaken Europe and stop competition to its world domination.

Dan Morgan
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

      =====

I think you left out most of the story. You cherry picked your facts and you sound as if you are too personally involved. The Rage Against the War Machine was a good rally and march to the White House, home of your Emperor.

Tim Kearney

Stand with Ukraine - UK solidarity statement and call for protests for the anniversary of Russia’s invasion  (Ukraine Solidarity Campaign - (UK))

We are calling for and supporting protests, actions and meetings in solidarity with Ukraine in the last week of February –  during the global week of action organized by the European Network for Solidarity with Ukraine and others, marking the anniversary of Russia’s invasion. 

The casualties of Russia’s war in Ukraine are counted in tens of thousands, the displaced in many millions, the damage in tens of billions of pounds. The invading forces are systematically committing crimes including intentional killing of civilians, rape, destruction of vital infrastructure, and forced displacement and deportations, including of children. Meanwhile the war is transforming Putin’s Russia into an even more violently reactionary and authoritarian regime. 

A democratic, lasting peace for the peoples of Ukraine and Russia requires the defeat of Russia’s brutal imperialism. We stand with Ukraine’s military resistance to Putin’s war, and with the anti-war resistance in Russia. 

We demand the immediate withdrawal of all invading troops from the territory of Ukraine to its internationally recognized borders; the right for all refugees and displaced persons to return in conditions of safety; for those responsible for war crimes to be held fully accountable, and for meaningful justice for their victims. 

We demand governments increase humanitarian aid, and for the gifting to Ukraine of all the surplus UK military equipment due to be replaced, especially the 79 Challenger tanks, 170 Scimitar reconnaissance vehicles, all Warrior infantry fighting vehicles, Typhoon fighter aircraft - to help Ukraine win more quickly, with less suffering.

We commit to building renewed and expanded solidarity with Ukraine’s resistance; with Ukraine’s labour movement and left in their fight for independence, to defend workers’ rights, human rights and democracy during the war, and for a more just and democratic post-war reconstruction; and with the anti-war movement and independent labour organisations in Russia. 

We call for the UK to increase its support and welcome for the victims of this conflict, and to end the hostile environment facing refugees. 

Initial signatories:

  • Gary Smith, GMB General Secretary
  • Barbara Plant, GMB President
  • Mick Whelan, ASLEF General Secretary
  • Chris Kitchen, NUM General Secretary
  • Simon Weller, ASLEF Assistant General Secretary
  • John Moloney, PCS Assistant General Secretary (pc)
  • Oksana Holota, Confederation of Free Trade Unions of Ukraine (in UK)
  • Pavlo Holota, Independent Union of Mineworkers of Ukraine (in UK)
  • John McDonnell MP
  • Nadia Whittome MP
  • Clive Lewis MP
  • Rachael Maskell MP
  • Lloyd Russell-Moyle MP
  • Ian Lavery MP
  • Mick Antoniw, Member of the Senedd
  • Paul Sweeney, Member of the Scottish Parliament
  • Alena Ivanova, Sacha Ismail, Chris Ford, Ukraine Solidarity Campaign
  • Paul Mason, writer and campaigner
  • Peter Tatchell, human rights campaigner
  • Yuliya Yurchenko, Sotsialnyi Rukh, Ukraine Solidarity Campaign, UCU activist
  • Matthew Hull, Trade Union Liaison Officer, Green Party of England & Wales (pc)
  • Tessa Milligan, Open Labour Co-Chair
  • Amen Tesfay, Open Labour Co-Chair
  • Mark Boothroyd, Unite and RCN activist, Guys’ and St Thomas’
  • Zoe Williams, journalist
  • Daniel York Loh, writer, performer, filmmaker
  • Mike Davis, editor, Chartist
  • Julie Ward, Chartist, former Member of the European Parliament
  • Cathy Nugent, Workers’ Liberty
  • Vijay Menezes-Jackson, Chair, National Young Members' Committee, PCS (pc)
  • Vera Horton, Belarusian activist, BelDiasporaTV
  • John-Paul Himka, historian

See here for list of additional Initial signatories - Stand with Ukraine – UK solidarity statement and call for protests for the anniversary of Russia’s invasion – Кампанія Солідарності з Україною (ukrainesolidaritycampaign.org)

This statement was launched by the Ukraine Solidarity Campaign https://ukrainesolidaritycampaign.org.

Preserve and Expand the Public Health Resources Under the COVID State of Emergency DO NOT End the State of Emergency! Protect Everyone! (The People’s CDC)

 

The US has suffered more from Covid-19 than other high-income nations. The state of emergency increased access to Medicaid, and assured free access to vaccines, tests, masks, and treatments for all US residents, including more than 30 million uninsured Americans. Even with these additional resources, the poor US government response has led to a nearly 3-year decline in average life expectancy, and larger declines in low-income and communities of color. Removing resources such as tests and care during the ongoing pandemic will cause a deadly disaster and worsen these intolerable inequities. The pandemic has NOT ended, and the US lacks sound public health policy to move to long-term management. We must fight to preserve and expand these wins. Moving forward, the US public deserves better.

These facts demonstrate the dangers of ending the emergency:

  • Covid-19 continues to kill more than 450 people a day as of February 2023. Over 93% of Americans live in areas with substantial or high transmission rates.
  • There are 14,000 new cases reported per day nationwide, despite diminishing access to testing (NYT Tracker).
  • Approximately 30,000 people with Covid-19 are hospitalized in the US, nearly 40% of them under age 60 as of early February (NYT Tracker).
  • Covid-19 continues to mutate rapidly, and future mutations may be more severe. New vaccines will be needed, and people must be able to afford them. Without  federal funding under the state of emergency, drug companies will charge the public over $100 per shot, clearly not affordable for millions.
  • Most people will lose access to free rapid and PCR tests.  It’s vital to diagnose people who get Covid-19 so they can isolate and get needed care in order for the US to control the pandemic and decrease deaths and Long COVID.
  • Filling a prescription for Paxlovid, which can reduce the length and severity of Covid-19, will cost between $100-130 and require a doctor’s visit, clearly unaffordable for most people.
  • As many as 15 million people could be cut off from Medicaid (depending on state policies) starting in April, losing access to general medical care as well as Covid-19 care.
  • Seniors on Medicare will lose access to free telehealth in 2024.
  • Data collection and reporting on Covid-19 test positivity, hospitalizations, and more will diminish, leaving the nation without good warnings of virus trends.

For more information, contact the People’s CDC 

The People’s CDC is a coalition of public health practitioners, scientists, healthcare workers, educators, advocates and people from all walks of life working to reduce the harmful impacts of COVID-19.

Here's To Strong Women [Inspirational Video]

Watch here

Here’s To Strong Women; We May Know Them. We May Be Them. We May Raise Them. 

Here’s To Strong Women who are now the leaders of the new generation. We need more girls growing up and tackling the stereotypes to lead our Parliaments, our Boardrooms, our Courtrooms and Universities. 

We need more girls like YOU to be able to be the future leaders and future decision-makers. This video is a simple motivational and inspirational reminder for all the strong women out there. 

Here is to all the women founders, the women influencers and the heroes who are not planning to give up and have no incentive to quit the battle. 

Please help us to share and spread the word!

"Makers: Women Who Make America": New Film Chronicles Past 50 Years of Feminist Movement (Democracy Now!)

Watch here

Feb 26, 2013
http://www.democracynow.org - We look at a major new documentary that tells the story of how women have shaped the United States over the last 50 years through political and personal empowerment. It's called, "Makers: Women Who Make America" and it premieres tonight in a three-hour special on PBS. Narrated by Meryl Streep, the film explores the women's movement from the publication of Betty Friedan's "The Feminine Mystique" published 50 years ago this month in 1963 to the Anita Hill v. Clarence Thomas hearings in 1991. "Makers" shares the story of legendary figures such as Gloria Steinem and Oprah Winfrey, to lesser known pioneers such as Kathrine Switzer. In 1967, Switzer became the first woman to officially enter and run the Boston Marathon. Her run made headlines when a top race official tried to forcibly remove her from the race. She finished the race. 

March In Love for Life  --   for Nuclear Disarmament - Albuquerque - March 5

 

Unite! March In Love for Life!   for Nuclear Disarmament!  

From Morningside Park to Sandia Weapons Lab Gate!

On March 5, 2023 we celebrate the 2nd anniversary of the entry into effect of the UN Treaty to Prohibit Nuclear Weapons. Let us unite! May our children speak through their arts, written word, spoken word, time to be seen and heard. It’s time.

Sunday, March 5th from 1 to 5:00 PM

Meet: at Morningside Park in Albuquerque at 1:00 pm.

219 Morningside Dr SE

Sag vehicles for those who would march part of the route or none of the route

Gather at 1:00 PM at Morningside Park

  • Raging Grannies will sing between speeches
  • On or before 2:00 PM March will start on Lead Avenue
  • March will go East on Zuni to Louisiana Blvd (on the south side of Zuni),
  • South on Louisiana to gate of the Sandia Weapons Lab/Air Force Base 
  • The march finishes at the Gate by 4:00 to 4:30 PM
  • Shuttles back to vehicles at Morningside Park area will be arrange -March will go approximately 3 miles (porta-potty) along the route.

Sponsoring organization:

  • Donald and Sally-Alice Thompson Chapter Veterans for Peace

Endorsing Organizations:

  • Joan Duffy Chapter Veterans for Peace Santa Fe
  • Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) Albuquerque
  • Raging Grannies
  • Demand Nuclear Abolition (DNA)
  • Green Party of the ABQ Metro Area (GPAMA)
  • A.S.H.U.N.M. Affordable Student Housing UNM
  • International Depleted Uranium Study Group (IDUST)
  • Peaceful Skies Coalition
  • Albuquerque Center for Peace and Justice
  • Nuke Watch New Mexico

More endorsements coming!

Questions: Elizabeth Smith and Bill Tiwald, 
505-331-6676, 505-697-2545   
Email: 8eli.love.8@gmail.com   tiwaldbill@gmail.com

Join us for the 2023 Lobby Day for the NY Health Act! - March 14 (Physicians for a National Health Program - NY Metro Chapter)

We are excited to invite you to our annual NY Health Act Lobby Day, which will take place on Zoom on Tuesday, March 14th.  

With the new year comes a number of changes to New York’s single-payer landscape with a new Assembly Health Committee Chair, a new Assembly lead sponsor of the New York Health Act, and new opportunities to bring more people into our movement from across the state. 

We look forward to joining with YOU to demonstrate that the New York Health Act is an urgent priority for health workers and patients across New York!

3 Important Dates to Add to Your Calendar:
We invite you to attend the following educational events leading up to Lobby Day in preparation for our lobby visits, to help us build knowledge, power, and momentum. All are welcome and each of these events will be held virtually so are accessible from anywhere!

Closed captioning will be provided.

🌟 Tuesday, March 7 @ 7:30PM: Virtual NY Health Act Forum - RSVP!
🌟 Thursday, March 9 @ 7:30PM: Virtual Lobby Skills Training - RSVP!
🌟 Tuesday, March 14: Virtual NY Health Act Lobby Day - RSVP! 

Help us spread the word! Share the link to sign up with your colleagues, friends, and networks: bit.ly/LobbyDayNYHA2023!

RSVP

Our 2023 Virtual Lobby Day Goals:

✅ Show leadership in Albany that the NY Health Act is a priority for NYers.
✅ Urge current co-sponsors to more actively support the NY Health Act.
✅ Meet with skeptical legislators to address their concerns and recruit support.
✅ Take an active role in changing our inequitable, unjust, profit-centered healthcare system!
✅ Support other health justice-centered legislation in Albany:

☝Reproductive Freedom & Equity Act (A00361A / S00348B) will establish a fund to cover the cost of abortion —as well as traveling expenses and childcare costs—for low-income New Yorkers and people coming from out of state. Has already passed the state senate!
☝Coverage 4 All (A3020 / S2237) will create a state-funded Essential Plan for ALL New Yorkers up to 200% of the federal poverty level, regardless of immigration status, by including undocumented immigrants in the state’s application for the 1332 waiver.
☝Protect Telemedicine Abortion Across State Lines (S1066A / A1079A) will shield clinicians and pharmacists throughout the state from: prosecution, loss of license or malpractice, and from subpoenas of their medical records for prescribing and sending of abortion pills to people who need them.
☝Indigent Care Pool (Bill numbers pending) will redistribute public funding to protect true safety-net hospitals providing health care for low-income, people with disabilities, and communities of color.
☝End Medical Debt package: Ounce of Prevention Act (S1366) requires all hospitals to use a uniform application form and policy and relates to distribution of funds from the general hospital indigent care pool, and Fair Medical Debt Reporting (S4907) prohibits medical debt from being collected by a consumer reporting agency or included in a consumer report.

Additional Ways to Support the Movement Today:

❗Physicians and medical students: sign our Doctors for NY Health Petition.
❗Stories are the heart of our advocacy. Share your experience as a health worker here to be featured as part of our ongoing #MedStoryMonday social media campaign on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Not a health worker? Share your story here!
❗NYC residents: sign this petition requesting the NYC Comptroller conduct a study on the financial impact of the NY Health Act on the NYC Budget.
❗Support PNHP-NY Metro by making a financial donation today!

List of cosponsors is in formation: Contact morgan@pnhpnymetro.org to add your organization!

Thanks for all you do, 

The Lobby Day Planning Team

Physicians for a National Health Program - NY Metro Chapter  
131 W 33rd St 4th floor
New York, NY 10001

Book Talk - Henry Maar- Freeze! The Grassroots Movement to Halt the Arms Race and End the Cold War - March 15 (Tamiment Library)

Henry Maar on The Grassroots Movement to Halt the Arms Race and End the Cold War

Wednesday, March 15, 2023  --   (5:00 PM ET)

Virtual Event (On Zoom)

Join author, Henry Richard Maar III, as he discusses his recent book with Peter Kuznick.

About the Book

In Freeze!, Henry Richard Maar III chronicles the rise of the transformative and transnational Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign. Amid an escalating Cold War that pitted the nuclear arsenal of the United States against that of the Soviet Union, the grassroots peace movement emerged sweeping the nation and uniting people around the world. Learn more about the book on the Cornell University Press website.

About the Speakers

Henry Richard Maar III is the author of Freeze!: The Grassroots Movement to Halt the Arms Race and End the Cold War. He is a Lecturer in History at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and at California State University, Northridge.

Peter Kuznick is a Professor of History and Director of the Nuclear Studies Institute at American University. He is the author of Beyond the Laboratory: Scientists As Political Activists in 1930s America, co-author with Akira Kimura of Rethinking the Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Japanese and American Perspectives, co-author with Yuki Tanaka of Nuclear Power and Hiroshima: The Truth Behind the Peaceful Use of Nuclear Power, and co-editor with James Gilbert of Rethinking Cold War Culture. Active in the Civil Rights, anti-Vietnam War and anti-nuclear movements, in 1995, he founded American University’s award-winning Nuclear Studies Institute, which co-hosted major exhibits on the atomic bombings, with the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1995 on the 50th anniversary and in 2015 on the 70th. The 1995 exhibit displayed many of the artifacts that were originally supposed to be part of the Smithsonian’s ill-fated Enola Gay exhibit. He and filmmaker Oliver Stone co-authored the 12-part Showtime documentary film series and book The Untold History of the United States (2012-2013). He and Stone also recently co-authored The Concise Untold History of the United States (2014), based on the documentary scripts.

RSVP

Tamiment Library & Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives/ NYU Special Collections
Elmer Holmes Bobst Library
70 Washington Square South, 2nd Floor
New York, NY 10012

View Film - Voices from the Holy Land Online Film Salon: The Law and the Prophets (view film in advance of discussion) - March 19

Watch this film and (if you can) join the discussion.

Invitation to Online Film Salon - Sunday March 19, 2023

What are the tools of Israeli lawfare used against Palestinians?

How can one be an effective prophet for justice in the Holy Land?

In Israel, East Jerusalem, and the West Bank, the law is whatever Israel deems to be in the best interest of Jewish Israelis, which is often to the detriment of Palestinians. In this, Israel violates the civil and human rights of Palestinians as a matter of standard policy. The Law and the Prophets explains the mechanisms of control, some violent and some nonviolent, that have been perfected through decades of civil and military rule of Palestinians. The documentary also introduces us to a few of the brave and determined individuals—prophets—who struggle to expose the abuses, reveal how the system operates, and point the way towards a more just society.

Watch the film for free at your convenience; then join the Q&A Discussion with:

* Joshua Vis: Filmmaker, writer, activist and tour organizer
* Muhanad Al Qaisy: General Coordinator-Olive Tree Campaign and Project Officer-Joint Advocacy Initiative
* Chase Carter: Communications Director-Center for Jewish Nonviolence and community organizer
Our moderator is Mercy Aiken: Author and Relationship Manager-Network of Evangelicals for the Middle East.

You must register to join the discussion & receive access to the film

Watch the Trailer

March 19, 2023  --  03:00 PM in Eastern Time (US and Canada)