Tidbits – Dec. 14, 2023 – Reader Comments: GOP Embrace of Trump; Israel Assassinations in Gaza Bombing; Drugs Disappear From Insurance Coverage; Fusion??; Kissinger; UE Murals in Chicago; Huge Book Sale; Webinar From Israel-Where Do We Go From Here

Reader Comments: GOP Embrace of Trump; Israel Assassinations in Gaza Bombing; Drugs Disappear from Insurance Coverage; Fusion ??; Kissinger; UE Murals in Chicago; Huge Book Sale; Webinar from Israel - Where do we go from here; more....

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Tidbits - Reader Comments, Resources, Announcements, AND cartoons - Dec. 14, 2023,Portside

Resources:

 

Announcements:

Republican House Cleaning  --  Cartoon by Pedro X. Molina

 

Pedro X. Molina
December 9, 2023
Counterpoint

Re: Feds Are ‘Oblivious to Domestic Crisis!’ Transport Workers Union Leader Says

(posting on Portside Labor)  

😡😡😡"whether it be downtown Atlanta, New Orleans, San Francisco — every city I have been in the last six months is an absolute heartache. Children sleeping with their mothers on cardboard boxes on the street.”

This is America today.

Dennis Schmunk
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

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The List  --  Cartoon by Mike Luckovich

 

Mike Luckovich
December 5, 2023
Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Re: ‘A Mass Assassination Factory’: Inside Israel’s Calculated Bombing of Gaza  

I'm glad people are still reporting on the Gaza Genocide. Its all  maddening.  So much death and destruction.  Geneva Conventions that the US oversaw mean absolutely nothing to Biden administration, nor the previous one for that matter. Our country and our 'greatest allies' are violating every international protocol and nothing is being done.  Too much power in the hands of the worst of humanity.

Jennifer Nouri
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

Re: Definitions Matter  

As Pope Francis has learned, according to pro-Israel groups it is unacceptable to refer to what Israel is doing in Gaza as “genocide” or “terrorism,” as if there were better terms to use to describe: the indiscriminate bombing of heavily populated areas that so far has taken the lives of over 15,000 and reduced to rubble over one-half of the structures of northern Gaza; the mass dislocation of 1.5 million people after ordering the population of northern Gaza to leave their homes (and now forbidding them to return); and denying the population water, fuel, power, and medicine for prolonged periods.

As Pope Francis made clear, it is both necessary and correct to demonstrate compassion and concern for the safety and security of Israelis and Palestinians who are at risk in this deadly conflict. And it is equally correct to condemn both what Hamas has done to target civilians and what Israel is doing to carpet-bomb Gaza. For both Israelis and Palestinians to find a future in which both live and prosper, it is imperative to break through the stranglehold of imposed definitions and demand peace with justice.

Norm Littlejohn
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

Re: Why Drugs Are Disappearing From Your Insurance Coverage  

This is an excellent article one of the best I have read  please thank. Helen for her excellent documentation I am a retired professor of public health and pharmacy  I have sent this on to many colleagues  thanks for the wonderful coverage on a topic few health professional understand besides the public.

Jack Salmon

      =====

For the millions of Americans that take one or more prescription drugs, having a health insurance plan that covers their medications is crucial. The list of covered medications — called a drug formulary — can mean the difference between a $10 copay at the pharmacy and paying thousands out-of-pocket for a vital medication.

Yet unbeknownst to many patients, insurers can change their drug coverage throughout the year, thereby removing medications that enrollees were promised. When this happens, those who lose access to their medicines are usually barred from immediately moving to a different insurance plan. The problem is widespread and growing: In the last nine years, the number of medications being eliminated from many insurance plans skyrocketed by around 1,584 percent.

Lorraine Suzuki
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

      =====

And the left should be addressing this healthcare accessibility more! I think people are literally losing their lives in similar quantities due to healthcare injustices just as in war . Right here in this country. But old and sick people are not seen

Deborah Romero
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

Tree of Liberty  --  Cartoon by Clay Bennett

 

Clay Bennett
December 3, 2023
Chattanooga Times Free Press

Re: The Theocratic Ambitions of Project 2025  

Not sure why anyone thinks this is a new phenomenon. We have been fighting this battle against religious extremists since our inception. What I think is funny is the people who think we can fight this by voting for a catholic, the religion we have had to fight the most for imposing their views on our government.

Ben Cupp
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

Re: DeSantis’ State Guard Partners With Combat-Training Company To Recruit, Train Members  

This sounds like the beginnings of a breakaway state.

Robert Laite
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

Re: The Life-and-Death Cost of Conservative Power  

“What unites the right is not a principled belief in federalism or local control but a preference for making decisions at whatever level of government they dominate.”

Gina Klein
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

      =====

How do we demonstrate that the policies and practices of the ultra right make the GOP the death party? Here, via Portside,  Paul Starr shows the correlation between right wing practice and earlier death (when compared to less reactionary policies). The studies reported seem elegantly done to me.  Of course, correlation does not prove causation but the associations are very interesting nonetheless.

Daniel Millstone
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

Re: Ambition, Yall – Everyone Please Get on UAW’s Level  

While I know that Labor Unions have brought us a lot of good, I also know they frequently follow the Corporate Model; being more concerned with staying around and growing bigger and stronger than in protecting their "customers" or in this case, members. What first brought this to my attention was the realization that many of them opposed Universal Health Care because one thing the Unions offered was Health Insurance. They opposed giving away benefits that workers would rely on them for, even if it was better for all laborers to have this.

From the first time I read of him, I felt that Shawn Fain was different; that he cared about the workers more than any organization he may establish. I felt he understood that you couldn't compartmentalize people, roles in society, economic issues, wars and killing, or any other social issue without affecting them all. It's all a matter of "Me/Me/Me" vs. "Us/Us/Us" and in any long-term, the latter will provide the most benefit to the most people, if it is really treated as the goal.

His position on Palestinian need vs. money-making organizations (e.g. weapons manufacturers) that have no larger positive purpose, is a perfect example.

At this point (and of course what I see in who he is could change) I nominate Shawn Fain as the next Secretary of Labor. Would someone let the next President know.

Arlene Halfon

Kissinger  --  Cartoon by Dr. Keith Knight

Dr. Keith Knight
December 5, 2023
Daily Kos  

Life's Little Secrets ... Explained  --  Cartoon by Robert Waldo Brunelle Jr

 

Robert Waldo Brunelle Jr

Re: Brazil’s Politicians, Unions, and Workers Can’t Agree on How To Protect Gig Labor

(posting on Portside Labor)  

Gig labor typically has no benefits, no health insurance, no paid holidays, no overtime, no pensions, just brutal working conditions and near starvation wages. Outlaw it.

Charles Patrick Lynch
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

Re: We WILL Fix Climate Change!

(posting on Friday Nite Videos)  

The statement that we have warmed 1.2 degrees, and 1.5 is the goal caused me to turn the video off.

1.2 degrees is old news and we are, in fact, over 1.5 if atmospheric pollution is factored in. As we clean up or reduce fossil fuels, atmospheric pollution cooling effect will abate and a spike to where we are really at will occur. This is James Hansen saying this and it is happening now. We recently hit 2 degrees briefly. The west Antarctic ice sheet has been declared lost. The premise that we if we are deep in deep trouble means we should give up, a statement in the video, is a straw dog. The worst it gets the more radical we should get. That's how revolutions work outside of TED talks.

Chuck Willer

Re: The Challenge of Fusion Power  

This account of onsite fusion research concludes with "And we do need fusion on this planet, badly." What is highly misleading in this article is the non-recognition of the fact that we already have a fusion reactor at a safe distance, 93 million miles from the Earth, in the core of our Sun which is delivering abundant energy to us.

All humanity needs to do is accelerate the creation of wind/solar power harnessing this solar flux to replace fossil fuels before much worse climate catastrophes occur than we now witness if the 1.5 deg C warming target is breached. The billions of dollars spent to implement onsite fusion power has been a diversion from funding which should have gone instead to create a global renewable energy infrastructure. Onsite fusion powering human society if it is ever realized will likely take decades to actualize, not a real option to support when renewable energy technologies are already supplying energy.

For a more in-depth critique of the fusion research agenda see https://thebulletin.org/2018/02/iter-is-a-showcase-for-the-drawbacks-of-fusion-energy/

David Schwartzman

Re: Why Don’t Americans Believe in Science?  

Fringe religious groups have been promoting anti-vaxxism since the 1920s. And you don't want know what they were saying about aluminum cookware.

Eleanor Roosevelt
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

Koch Network promoted Article V Constitutional Convention  

Please cover the Koch Network promoted Article V Constitutional Convention of the States.  They have 28 of the 34 states they need to completely gut the Federal Government. See the Heritage plan.

Frank Kashner

Re: ‘Ballad of an American’: The Illustrious Life of Paul Robeson, Newly Illustrated

(posting on Portside Culture)  

I think this is by and large a very good review of your new book, Paul. Mazeltov.

The only fault I'd find with it is its failure to embrace the Popular Front, as Robeson did, as a model for today - the only way we can stop incipient fascism, here and abroad.

With best wishes -

Leonard J. Lehrman
ljlehrman.artists-in-residence.com

Re: The Challenge to the Left in 2024  

The left needs to create some community, with fun and face-to-face discussion. The right has churches, what have we got?

Robert Wayne Johnson
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

Henry Kissinger: War Criminal— Poster of the Week  (Center For the Study of Political Graphics)

Wanted: For Crimes Against Humanity
Anonymous
Silkscreen, 2001
Los Angeles, CA
51319

With the death of Henry Kissinger this week, the corporate media is lauding him as an exemplary national security advisor and secretary of state. However, this Nobel Peace Prize winner is regarded world-wide as a war criminal.

He is responsible for extending the Viet Nam War, even after recognizing it was unwinnable. He was responsible for the U.S. bombing of Cambodia, kept secret from U.S. taxpayers (1969 - 70). He was complicit in the violent coup d'état against the democratically government of Chile (1973). He supported the Turkish invasion and partitioning of the Republic of Cyprus (1974). Kissinger and President Gerald Ford approved Indonesia’s invasion of East Timor, just days after East Timor declared its independence from Portugal (1974). He supported the apartheid government of South Africa and opposed the independence movement in Angola. And much more.

Few in American history have caused so much death and destruction in Latin America, Southeast Asia, and Southern Africa.

CSPG’s Poster of the Week was produced to protest Kissinger who was speaking before the Los Angeles World Affairs Council, at the Beverly Hills Hotel, July 18, 2001. The poster’s concept and layout was taken from a 1983 poster made in Cyprus, titled: "Wanted by the Cypriots."

Notable quotes:

[The U.S. could] “either persist in averting their gaze from the egregious impunity enjoyed by a notorious war criminal and lawbreaker, or they can become seized by the exalted standards to which they continually hold everyone else.”

—Christopher Hitchens, journalist, The Trial of Henry Kissinger, 2001

“Once you’ve been to Cambodia, you’ll never stop wanting to beat Henry Kissinger to death with your bare hands. You will never again be able to open a newspaper and read about that treacherous, prevaricating, murderous scumbag sitting down for a nice chat with Charlie Rose or attending some black-tie affair for a new glossy magazine without choking. Witness what Henry did in Cambodia – the fruits of his genius for statesmanship – and you will never understand why he’s not sitting in the dock at The Hague next to Miloševic.”

- Anthony Bourdain, chef, “A Cook’s Tour: Global Adventures in Extreme Cuisines,” 2001

Resources:
 

Click Here To Support CSPG with a Financial Donation

Center for the Study of Political Graphics
3916 Sepulveda Blvd.
Suite 103/104
Culver City, CA 90230

T: 310.397.3100   /   F: 310.397.9305

Near West Side union hall’s sale could mean ‘heartbreaking’ destruction of historic union-themed mural

Completed in 1974 by Chicago artists John Pitman Weber and Jose Guerrero, the painting is inside the United Electrical Workers union hall, which soon could be sold and redeveloped.

By  Sun-Times staff
December 1, 2023
Chicago Sun-Times

One part of the labor-themed mural by John Pitman Weber and the late Jose Guerrero inside the United Electrical Workers union hall at 37 S. Ashland Ave.  (Photo: Ashlee Rezin / Sun-Times)

The “Solidarity” mural inside the United Electrical Workers union hall at 37 S. Ashland Ave. illustrates struggles and successes of working people.

In one scene in the mural, a Southern sheriff, a Ku Klux Klan member, an industrialist, a general and National Guard members are seen suppressing workers.

Other images show people of different races clasping hands, a cartoonish corporate boss being forced to sign a contract and union leaders handing leaflets to factory workers.

“It’s a classic because it’s the first and maybe the only” mural in Chicago “really dealing with union history, per se, in our generation,” says John Pitman Weber, the Chicago artist who painted it with the late Jose Guerrero in 1974.  

RELATED

Also, Weber says, “it’s unique compositionally,” winding around a staircase, bending with the walls and adjusting for doorways and corners.

A portion of the “SolidBut the mural — one of the oldest in the city — could end up being destroyed because the building is headed toward a likely sale and redevelopment.
If that happens, an outdoor mural on the building also would be lost. That one was done in 1997 by the late Mexican artist Daniel Manrique and shows people joining hands in solidarity and celebrating international unity among workers.arity” mural at the United Electrical Workers union hall.  (Photo: Ashlee Rezin / Sun-Times)

But the mural — one of the oldest in the city — could end up being destroyed because the building is headed toward a likely sale and redevelopment.

If that happens, an outdoor mural on the building also would be lost. That one was done in 1997 by the late Mexican artist Daniel Manrique and shows people joining hands in solidarity and celebrating international unity among workers.  

A mural by late Mexican artist Daniel Manrique on the outside of the United Electrical Workers union hall at 37 S. Ashland Ave.  (Photo: Ashlee Rezin / Sun-Times)

“The building is under contract, but there’s still a contingency for them to clear which won’t be resolved before mid-January,” the union’s Carl Rosen says. “If it all clears, we’ll be moving out by mid-March. We’re in the process of getting videos and good photos. We’re also exploring with Chicago Public Art Group whether there are some ways to physically preserve parts of the mural, although that doesn’t sound real hopeful.”  

John Pitman Weber   (photo credit: Chicago Public Art Group)

Weber and the late William Walker started became the Chicago Public Art Group in 1970 as a vehicle to create socially conscious public artwork.

The likely redevelopment of the site comes as new housing, restaurants and offices have sprouted in the area as downtown’s footprint has expanded through the West Loop and into the Near West Side.

Another view of “Solidarity,” the mural done in 1974 by artists John Pitman Weber and the late Jose Guerrero.  (Photo:  Ashlee Rezin / Sun-Times)

Rosen says the union is selling “because the area has gentrified” and is “no longer a great location for a union hall — hard to park, etc. Don’t have the same needs for office space we used to have in part due to advent of virtual meetings. The building needs a lot of work — not accessible, etc. Instead, can invest the funds from the building sale in organizing at a time when workers are ready and willing to join unions.”

Many of the unions that used to be clustered near the United Electrical Workers hall have moved elsewhere.

The union represents about 35,000 workers nationwide ranging from sheet metal workers to scientists and librarians.

Rosen says that the developers may convert the building into townhomes or apartments.

“Yes, it’s bittersweet to leave the building. It’s been UE’s home in Chicago since 1947. Walking through the historic murals in the stairwell to get to our offices on the second floor has been a gift for decades. But we aren’t going far — we’ll be moving to space at another union hall not far away.”

Weber says of his mural, “If we can save part of it, that’d be great. I don’t think we can save more than a few parts, but I don’t know if we’re able to save any of it, so meanwhile we’re trying to get it documented as well as we possibly can.

“It’s just heartbreaking,” Weber says. “I understand it, but it’s heartbreaking.”  

Chicago’s murals & mosaics

Part of a series on public art in the city and suburbs. More murals are added every week.

Click on the map below for a selection of Chicago-area murals
https://chicago.suntimes.com/murals-mosaics

Gift Bundles: 5 Books for $55 (or less)  (Haymarket Books)

This year, as part of our Holiday Sale, we’ve put together a selection of ten gift bundles—plenty to choose from for each of the radical readers on your shopping list!

Each gift bundle includes a curated selection of five books on a given theme, all for $55 (or less).

Themes include: Free Palestine!, Abolition Now!, Socialism 101, Class War, the Black Radical Tradition, Poetry for the People, Karl Marx Was Right, and more.  

More Gift Bundles   --   Click here

Remember: ALL Haymarket Books are 40% Off for the duration of our Holiday Sale.

Haymarket Books  
P.O. Box 180165
Chicago, IL 60618

Tel: 773-583-7884
Email: info@haymarketbooks.org

Webinar from Israel - Where do we go from here? - December 17  (Standing Together)

December 17, 2023 01:00 PM EST

Join our webinar this Sunday December 17th! Registration is required - the link to register is here-

Standing Together   עומדים ביחד نقف معًا

Standing Together  

info@standing-together.org

Sing in Solidarity Presents: Red Folkways Left-Wing Music from the American South and Appalachia - New York City - January 13

Sing in Solidarity formally invites you to Red Folkways, a concert of music from the long and proud traditions of Socialist, Communist, and Union movements in the Southern USA and Appalachia. Drawing on roots music from the National Miners Union (NMU), the Southern Tenant Farmers Union (STFU), and other radical working class movements from the early 20th century, Sing in Solidarity will spotlight the rich culture of an oft-overlooked chapter in the history of the American Left. Songs by Sara Ogan Gunning, Jim Garland, John L. Handcox, Woody Guthrie and more.

The People's Forum, 320 W 37th Street

January 13, 2024
Doors 6pm, Music 7pm

$20, ticket link 

Sing in Solidarity is NYC’s premiere socialist movement choir. It is a working group of the NYC Democratic Socialists of America.