Tidbits – Mar.13 – Reader Comments: Mahmoud Khalil Arrest Greatest Threat to Free Speech Since Red Scare; Assault on Social Security; DHS Ends TSA Officers’ Contract; Teachers and Schools; Call Script: Demand the Release of Mahmoud Khalil; More…

Reader Comments: Mahmoud Khalil Arrest Greatest Threat to Free Speech Since Red Scare; Assault on Social Security; DHS Ends TSA Officers' Contract; Teachers And Schools Struggle To Help Children; Call Script: Demand the Release of Mahmoud Khalil;

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Tidbits - Reader Comments, Take Action, Announcements AND cartoons - Mar. 13, 2025,Portside

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TAKE ACTION:  Call Script: Demand the Release of Mahmoud Khalil
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Announcements:

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Re: This Is the Greatest Threat to Free Speech Since the Red Scare
 

In a post on Truth Social, Donald Trump made it clear that Mahmoud Khalil was snatched because of his activism. “This is the first arrest of many to come,” wrote Trump. 

IT'S OFFICIAL.  YOUR RIGHTS WILL BE DENIED.

Mary-Alice Strom
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

 

Re: Trump Is Launching an Assault on Social Security
 

If you like this article, please sign up for Snapshot, Portside's daily summary.

(One summary e-mail a day, you can change anytime, and Portside is always free.)

Despite his previous rhetoric to the contrary, it’s clear that Donald Trump is trying to finally be the one to successfully carry out the long-standing GOP goal: destroying Social Security.

Lumpy Grayson
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

 

Re: Here Comes Trump’s Privatization of the Social Security Administration
 

"After years of hard work and a lifetime of contributions, our seniors shouldn't have to worry about Republicans meddling with their Social Security," said one House Democrat.

Lynn Hamilton
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

 

Trump Tariffs  --  Cartoon by Walt Handelsman

 

Walt Handelsman
March 5, 2025
The Advocate (Baton Rouge, LA)

 

Re: DHS Moves To End Collective Bargaining for TSA Officers

(posting on Portside Labor)
 

The Department of Homeland Security announced plans “ending collective bargaining” for TSA’s transportation screening officers in a press release.

Party of the working class, huh?

Judyth Hollub
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

 

Re: ‘We Have Very Few Options but To Join Together To Organize for a General Strike’

(posting on Portside Labor)
 

The Struggle continues.

Association of Flight Attendants President SaraNelson made her comments following the Dept. of Homeland Security announcement on Friday that it is stripping Transportation Safety Administration (TSA) workers of their collective bargaining rights.

John G Mason
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

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This is a rallying cry for every non union worker.

Jennifer Nouri
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

 

Re: Hegseth Cuts Pentagon Work on Preventing Civilian Harm
 

Elon Musk said it. The problem with Western Civilization is empathy. Sooo... in the interest of efficiency (defined as that which puts money in the pockets of the billionaires), no need to worry about civilian casualties, who cares? Similarly, who needs the VA? Medicaid? Medicare? Social Security? Public education? Clean air and water and food? Public health? Medical research?

Elon and is ilk believe the planet is doomed, and the best thing to do is give them all the money so they can escape to Mars. Seriously.

Jack Radey
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

 

Medical Warning  --  Cartoon and Commentary by Rob Rogers

 

It is the fifth anniversary of the COVID-19 virus. The Lancet Commission estimated that 40% of COVID-19 deaths could have been averted if it hadn't been for Trump's lies and inadequate response to the pandemic.

Rob Rogers
March 11, 2025
TinyView

 

Re: The ADL Goes Quiet on Some Hatreds
 

Former ADL education director lays bare the dirty secret: "the ADL has long abandoned its stated mission of securing justice and fair treatment for all. Instead, it shields Israel from criticism over its decades-long oppression of the Palestinian people and dangerously conflate that critique with antisemitism, while giving cover to right-wing extremists."

Benjamin Amos Gerber
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

 

Re: Elon Musk Is South African. We Shouldn’t Forget It.
 

Discussion of Mr. Musk, especially in the United States, often misses something: He is a white South African, part of a demographic that for centuries sat atop a racial hierarchy maintained by violent colonial rule. That history matters. For all the attempts to describe Mr. Musk as a self-made genius or a dispassionate technocrat, he is in fact a distinctly ideological figure, one whose worldview is inseparable from his rearing in apartheid South Africa. More than just an eccentric billionaire, Mr. Musk represents an unresolved question: What happens when settler rule fails but settlers remain? That’s what is playing out in America today.

Jose G Ortiz
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

 

War in Ukrainia  --  Email from a Reader in Germany
 

I want that the war in Ukrainia stops. Dislike warmongers. Neither those pro Russia nor those pro NATO - including Stiglitz or Kosenko.

Another subject: I miss articles about the terrible crimes that the new leaders in Syria are committing against civilians - including women and children.

Dieter Sauerwald

 

Enablers Standing Silently By  --  Cartoon by Dave Whamond

 

Dave Whamond
May 29, 2020

 

Re: Bloody Sunday: Restored Photos Show the Violence That Shocked a Nation
 

Thank you for these iconic photographs. https://portside.org/2025-03-07/bloody-sunday-restored-photos-show-viol…

Velva Spriggs

 

Re: MAGA Newspaper Owner’s AI Bot Defends KKK
 

An AI-generated summary tried to offer “different views” on the hate group.

Gregory Kestel
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

 

Never Forget Who's Behind It All  --  Cartoon by Dr. James MacLeod

 

Dr. James MacLeod
March 9, 2025
MacLeodCartoons

 

Re: The Communist Folk Singers Who Shaped Bob Dylan
 

Folk music, for Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger, was never just music — it was memory, resistance, and a reminder that even in the harshest of times, the simplest songs can still carry the weight of a better world. Writing about Guthrie, Mike Gold posed a question: “Where are we all heading who have bet our lives on democracies? Who can say?” He found the answer in Guthrie’s “harsh and painful” songs — songs that “reek of poverty and genuine dirt and suffering.” “Democracy is like that,” he wrote, “and it is a struggle and a song.”

Perhaps it’s time for a new “Guthrie phase” — to pick up our machines against fascism, like the communist folk singers once did, and dare to imagine a new world.

Dave

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It may not be for everyone but if it’s for you, do not miss Taylor Dorrell’s  essay (published in Jacobin magazine and circulated by Portside) on the Almanac Singers and the Weavers. Some of the stories and links are new to me and fascinating.

Daniel Millstone
Post on Portside

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Very good article but I think to discuss the communist folk singers and not mention Paul Robeson leaves out an important part of the history 

Barry Markman

 

Teachers And Schools Struggle To Help Our Children
 

I teach 185 students across 6 sections of different history courses for a Philly high school, but teaching *history* is really such a minor part of my job. More often than not I am doing therapy, life coaching, career counseling, triage nursing, trauma management, addiction management, conflict resolution, and surrogate parenting, little of which I was ever trained for before starting teaching. In the last week alone, beyond teaching history, I have broken up fistfights, helped students cope with religious trauma-induced panic attacks, intervened SO many times to deprogram homophobic language, helped a student grieve a friend who just got shot, and tried to keep a kid conscious as he was ODing and vomiting like a sprinkler (he's fine).

It certainly doesn't have to be this way. In the complete absence of guaranteed social services and safety nets and the overwhelmingly violent presence of racial and class inequalities, gun violence, and segregated futures for the rich and poor, schools regularly function as a sort of makeshift social service last (and only) resort. Much like how the ER functions as "normal" healthcare for many of the poorest people in a country without universal healthcare, schools operate as overstretched, under-resourced sites of threadbare social service interventions at a point where it is almost too late, and far less effectively than if the various harms, injustices, and deprivations had been treated at their root.

For all of its posturing about the importance of family, I have never been more convinced of how much this country hates its children, especially kids of color. It has never been more clear to me at a visceral level how antithetical to *life* -- let alone human flourishing -- the "American way of life" actually is. The compound effects of intentional generational deprivation, societal cruelty, monetary gatekeeping for the enjoyment of so many things, a cult of anti-intellectualism, and a generalized poverty of time make for problems schools could never begin to solve... and if we built a truly humane and just society, they wouldn't be asked to.

Justin Mueller

[Justin Mueller, ph.d, is a political theorist, writer, and public school teacher in Philadelphia. He writes about the politics of time, abolitionism, and ways of implementing critical pedagogies in the classroom.]

 

Broker Abuse  --  Cartoon by Mike Stanfill

 

Mike Stanfill
March 10, 2025
Raging Pencils

 

Political Stunts Cannot Break What Martha Stewart Haskell Built
 

State Representative Natalie M. Blais, 1st Franklin District

(Proudly representing the 18 communities of the 1st Franklin District, Massachusetts)
PO Box 450, Sunderland, MA

I grew up on the Canadian border in Derby Line, Vermont — across from Stanstead, Quebec. Our communities were intertwined. Going through customs was just something we did. We knew the border agents by name. They were our neighbors and a part of our community. Canadian Dr. Gilles Bouchard would turn on his porchlight on Rue Dufferin if he was seeing patients. As Americans, we would cross the line with colds, plantar warts and all. A sign in his waiting room read, “No one MUST pay. If you are short of money, just say, ‘Thanks Doc!’ You will not get a bill.” Homes were built over the line. Streets crossed the line. The border was invisible to us all.

Today, the Haskell Free Library and Opera House still straddles the line. As a kid, it was my refuge. My library card was my ticket to other worlds. The Haskell’s librarians helped me to find them.

A scuffed piece of black tape runs across the floors to let visitors know what country they’re standing in. But unless you’re there to take a picture, no one pays the line any attention.

Which is why I was so disturbed to learn that, according to The Boston Globe, during a recent visit, Donald Trump’s Secretary of Homeland Security went to the Haskell Free Library, stood on the American side, and said, “USA No. 1” and then crossed the line and said, “The 51st state.” Her remarks came while she was in the area following the death of U.S. Border Patrol Agent David “Chris” Maland, who was shot and killed in service on January 20, 2025.

Since I first read Globe reporter Paul Heintz’s story, I have been trying to wrap my head around how a U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security could turn a visit to honor the life of Agent Maland into one celebrating this Administration’s goal of destroying our relationships with long-standing allies.

The impacts of 9/11 rippled to communities like Derby Line. The border shut down. Facilities were fortified. Barriers went up. Surveillance increased. You could no longer just let the border officer know that you were heading over to see Dr. Bouchard or your family member. You had to have identification. The attacks on our nation that day forever changed the fabric of small towns along the border. Working together, the United States and Canada implemented security measures that would help to prevent future attacks..

Today we’re facing a different kind of attack: one from political leaders who exploit fear and division to advance their own agendas. Last week’s implementation of tariffs against our long-standing neighbor and ally to the north not only serves to divide our two nations but also hurts everyday Americans.

The construction of a library and opera house along an international border was a gift from Martha Stewart Haskell. She chose the site purposefully so that Canadians and Americans could have equal access to literature and art.

I never could have imagined that this haven for me as a child would become a symbol to me as an adult.

Today, this building, commissioned by a woman and built over an international boundary line over 100 years ago, has given me hope.  

Haskell found a way to build something bigger than anyone ever could have imagined at the time — the Haskell Free Library and Opera House is a symbol that borders do not exist unless we construct them. Division does not grow unless we sow it. And disregard for our neighbors happens only when we choose to acknowledge the lines that could separate us.

The Haskell Free Library has stood through more than a century of political changes, wars, economic shifts, terrorist attacks, and much more. It is a reminder that no single person can destroy what Haskell built and that we are strongest when we push through boundaries, disregard the lines, and stand by our neighbors.

You can learn more about the Haskell Free Library and Opera House here: https://www.haskelloperahouse.org/support-us.html

 VTDigger Seven Days

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2025/02/27/nation/rising-border-tensions-th…

And then here’s John and I straddling the line. His last name is Rioux!

 

TAKE ACTION:  Call Script: Demand the Release of Mahmoud Khalil

 

 

Call ICE at: (318) 992-1600

Hello, my name is [Your Name], and I am calling to demand the immediate release of Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University student detained by ICE for his political activism.

This is an unconstitutional attack on free speech. The First Amendment protects all individuals, including non-citizens, from being punished for expressing their views. The Supreme Court has ruled that peaceful activism is not a crime. If we protected the speech of the Westboro Baptist Church, how can we justify jailing students for speaking out?

This detention echoes McCarthyism, where people were persecuted for their beliefs. America must not repeat its past mistakes. Targeting activists for dissent is illegal and un-American.

I demand an immediate answer: On what legal grounds is Mr. Khalil being held? If there are no formal charges, he must be released immediately.

I expect a response, and I will continue to follow up. Thank you.

Call now and demand his freedom! #FreeMahmoudKhalil

He is at the Central Louisiana ICE Processing Center.

If you would like to call and demand his release, you can reach the facility at (318) 992-1600 between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m

 

South Miami Immigrant Rights March  --  This Sunday, March 16

 

Migrant + immigrant rights march in Miami, FL at Tropical Park

If you're interested in volunteering please sign up here