Tidbits - March 10, 2022 - Reader Comments: War in Ukraine - Portside readers respond; Boycott Russian artists??; Baseball; Odetta; Starbucks; International Women’s Day; Prescription Drug Prices; Rachel Corrie Remembered; more....
Re: As Battle Wages Over Critical Race Theory, Schools Fail at Teaching Reconstruction (Jane Collins)
Happily ever after -- cartoon by Theo Moudakis
Re: Arms Industry Sees Ukraine Conflict as an Opportunity, Not a Crisis (Jim Price)
Re: Putin, Lenin, Imperialism and the (Real) History of Ukraine (Natalia Kuzmyn)
Re: Ending Ukraine Crisis and How U.S. Shock Therapy in Russia Enabled Putin (Allan Fisher)
Re: The Racist Double Standard in War Coverage (Miriam Haiman-González)
Re: Demoralised Russian Soldiers Tell of Anger at Being ‘Duped’ Into War (Timothy Page; Anne Murray; Kathryn Evann Wegner)
Re: ‘Key to White Survival’: How Putin Has Morphed Into a Far-Right Savior (Jim Maynard)
Re: Thousands of Russian Artists Denounce Invasion in Open Letter (Tom Gogan)
Russian Artists, the War and Putin -- statement of Aleksey Igudesman
Re: A Letter to the Western Left From Kyiv (Sonia Cobbins; Melvin Hugo Carlos Pritchard; Ben Bath)
Ukraine in Our Hearts -- cartoon by Pat Bagley
Re: Arms Industry Sees Ukraine Conflict as an Opportunity, Not a Crisis (Arlene Halfon)
MAGA Dilemma -- cartoon by Rex A. Jones
Re: This is How We Defeat Putin and Other Petrostate Autocrats (David Schwartzman)
Re: Congress Just Recognized Lynching as a Hate Crime. Here’s What That Means. (Timothy Page)
Re: How Union Drives in Mexico Help All Workers (Mexican Solidarity Coalition / Coalicion en Solidaridad con Mexico)
Re: The Lords of Baseball Think You’re Stupid (Tom Koecke; Norm Littlejohn)
Re: A Labor Movement to Challenge the Billionaires (John Case)
Re: How Odetta Revolutionized Folk Music (Deb Louis)
Re: Technology Is Terrifying in Steven Soderbergh’s Kimi (Van Caldwell)
When War Makes a Child -- poem by Tatiana Dolgushina
Tell Starbucks to Stop Union Busting (SEIU)
Resources:
Taking feminism back to its radical roots (Verso Books)
Celebrate International Women’s Day — Poster of the Week (Center for the Study of Political Graphics)
Announcements:
Emergency Relief Fund Concert for Ukraine - Philadelphia - March 14 (featuring musicians from the Philadelphia Orchestra and The Curtis Institute)
Not Without Us! Pathways to a Feminist Just Transition - March 14 (MADRE and Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung)
Angela Davis: In Conversation - March 14 (Toronto Public Library)
A Concert for Ukraine - March 14 (Metropolitan Opera)
Why US Prescription Drug Prices are So High… and How to Treat It -- March 15 (Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP) - NY Metro Chapter)
Holding Israel Accountable - March 16 (Rachel Corrie Foundation for Peace and Justice)
Nation Conversation: A Black Guy’s Guide to the Constitution - March 16
Book Talk: Ellen Schrecker - The Lost Promise: American Universities in the 1960s - March 31 (Tamiment Library & Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives)
Re: As Battle Wages Over Critical Race Theory, Schools Fail at Teaching Reconstruction
Whenever somebody uses the phrase Critical Race Theory, we should all immediately, politely, and firmly, say "You mean racism. You don't want schools to teach kids about racism."
Jane Collins
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
Happily ever after -- cartoon by Theo Moudakis
Theo Moudakis
March 8, 2022
Toronto Star
Re: Arms Industry Sees Ukraine Conflict as an Opportunity, Not a Crisis
Boeing, Lockheed, Raytheon, United Technologies and many others would not be publicly traded companies without government contracts. So yes, this is why they exist. War is how they stay alive.
Jim Price
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
Re: Putin, Lenin, Imperialism and the (Real) History of Ukraine
Gary Leupp seems to get much of his material on Ukraine from Putin's recent press conferences. A Tufts history prof bought the fake news of Neo-Nazi control of Donetsk. Portside featured another version of this same lie. With articles and teachers like these, small wonder 40% of the US population supported Trump, and backward state legislatures are those that Republican control.
The biggest reason for Putin to invade and "peace-keep" in east Ukraine is the disastrous Russian economy. Dnieper-Donets oil reserves are situated on the border between Russia and Ukraine, but most of it is on the Ukraine side. Putin doesn't give a damn about NATO encroachment, nor Neo-Nazis; he is simply offering pretext to steal neighboring wealth, as per Soviet-era tradition. Dnieper-Donets is possibly an even greater prize, if the rumours of its abiotic oil prove true. Taking the rest of the package will give Russia control of the Black Sea ports, while the terrorized, newly impoverished citizens become the work-slaves of tomorrow's Russia--as happened in WWII when Germans seized the western regions of Ukraine.
Putin's actions are straight out of Hitler's playbook, and to think otherwise is beyond naive. Leupp also seems to support Putin's claim that Russia made a country of Ukraine. Try going back past Yeltsin to late 9th-10th C, when Kiev Queen (Saint) Olga and her son St. Vladimir initiated the transition from paganism to Christianity, and passed it on to Russia. From then to 1448, the Russian church was headed by the metropolitans of Kiev (past spelling). As with most early countries, religion etched out future borders. Perhaps Leupp chooses to ignore how the Cossacks shaped the unique culture and statehood. But then, perhaps Putin considers the Holodomor of 1932-33 sound nation-building stuff, and the concentration camps culture what every older Ukrainian raves about. Leupp needs to meet with a few Ukrainians that went through those nation-destroying times with dictators who were much like Putin. He also needs to refrain from equating Biden to a "cracked and dangerous" Putin. Putin is a psycho, and psychos are incapable of empathy. Biden may be a hard-core capitalist, but he is fully capable of empathy, and Leupp should thank his lucky stars and stripes that Trump or some other anti-vaxxer is not in the Oval Office, wilfully turning millions away from the only sane, scientifically proven solution to Covid-19, and thereby killing off potentially millions more Americans. Short memory, this professor has.
Heaven forbid that Putin continue to advance, leading with the nuke card. To avert this, we need a committed peace-keeping force, and unfortunately all we have is the UN, or NATO, beyond Ukraine's borders. Not great, but Ukrainians want Western nations' support, not Putin's style of mass murder and oppression. Though true that the US and NATO have screwed up many countries to date, I suspect I would sooner have Biden as a US leader than anyone Leupp rationalized as appropriate. In Canada, we held our breath for four years of Trump, terrified over his alliances, and positively exhaled with relief upon learning Biden had won. It's possible no other Dem could have successfully run against Trump, so duped are the US masses by Fox news, capitalist Evangelical doctrine, and Russian style misinformation.
Portraying Putin as a potential victim of NATO expansionism and asking the world to appreciate this p.o.v. is beyond poor taste; it is the ready-made garbage of today's sick Republican party, whose knowledge of history is conveniently revised, and whose white supremacist cheerleaders can't make the leap to ask, "If Putin is going after Neo-Nazis to liberate Ukraine, why did he support white-supremacist Trump?"
Portside really needs to clean house. We enjoy most of your articles, but Leupp is no friend to democracy, and certainly not to Ukraine in its hour of need.
Natalia Kuzmyn,
Vancouver Island
Re: Ending Ukraine Crisis and How U.S. Shock Therapy in Russia Enabled Putin
What about Ukraine being a neutral country?
Allan Fisher
Re: The Racist Double Standard in War Coverage
"...It can happen to anyone." Shocked because unlike impoverished and uncivilized in brown countries. They don't view them as humans. NOW they can emphasize!? Never heard of "there but for the grace of God go I?" Apparently NOT.
Miriam Haiman-González
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
Re: Demoralised Russian Soldiers Tell of Anger at Being ‘Duped’ Into War
Cannon fodder: the lucky ones.
Timothy Page
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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I don’t think Putin would care about his soldiers knowing why they’re going to war. So sad for all these people. God bless them all.
Anne Murray
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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I don't believe any western media anymore
Kathryn Evann Wegner
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
Re: ‘Key to White Survival’: How Putin Has Morphed Into a Far-Right Savior
Russia has a much bigger “Neo-Nazi” problem than Ukraine… Russia is now the White Nationalists favorite country and Putin is their leader
Jim Maynard
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
Re: Thousands of Russian Artists Denounce Invasion in Open Letter
... and speaking of yeast in what ONCE was the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics...
Tom Gogan
Russian Artists, the War and Putin -- statement of Aleksey Igudesman
“Don’t you have anything to say about the situation in Ukraine???
As a Russian musician and a leading artist… Very disappointing, dear Aleksey 🙁 “
As I keep on getting messages like the one above, I would like to make my position quite clear:
I think any kind of war is horrific, pointless and does not belong in this century.
From what I have heard and read on the sites that are available to me, this aggression on the Ukraine from Putin was unprovoked and unnecessary.
That is my personal belief.
I am an artist and musician and my knowledge and insights into politics is very limited.
In general it is not the responsibility of artists to make political statements.
That we condemn war and oppose aggression, should be a given in our profession.
I myself have Jewish, Russian, Ukrainian, Latvian, Austrian and German roots.
However, I personally do not care too much about any of that.
I have always felt like a human being that is not tied to any nation, nationality, or ethnicity.
When my family and I left the Soviet Union in 1979, we had to give up our Soviet passports.
So in actual fact, I was never actually Russian. In our passports back then, it did not even say “Russian" - it said “Jewish”.
What is happening to the people of Ukraine is clearly a tragedy.
Presently, I am finding the right charities to work with and putting support into place, as well as working out how I can help in other ways.
However, I am begging everyone to stop witch-hunting and forcing them to give political statements.
To stop programming Russian music and to cancel Russian musicians, and other performing artists, regardless of whether they give statements or not, is deeply racist and intrinsically short-sighted.
Tchaikovsky has nothing to do with Putin. They never met and never will.
Imagine the following scenario:
You are a Russian artist who lives in Moscow with a family and a child, or who has family in Russia.
If you give statements against the government, the danger of something happening to you or your family in a regime like Russia is very real.
No-one should be forced to become a martyr and put their family and livelihood in danger. If one does, that has to be the individual's own choice.
Being persecuted on media and social media and disinvited from performances just shows how deeply screwed up our beliefs and understanding of today's world is, and how little empathy we really have for one another.
We shout for freedom of speech, but punish people when they differ in opinion or stay silent because they are scared of sharing their opinion due to real threats to themselves.
We ask for political correctness, equality and empathy, but we fail to put ourselves in other people's shoes and look at a different side or concern besides our own.
Please, let us people in the music world focus on the things that we can do well and are truly important coming from us, which is:
Helping the people in need in whatever way we can and spreading the message of music, love and peace.
Aleksey Igudesman
March 9, 2022
post on Facebook
Re: A Letter to the Western Left From Kyiv
Very interesting discussion of the complexities of Ukrainian internal politics, which are, and have long been, all over the map even within one family. I too wish the Russian people would get rid of Putin or at least boycott his invasion into Ukraine.
My main goal and role is to propose that the US and NATO do not pump up the military conflict, even though it enriches Northrop Grumman etc. We do not need to be involved in another Afghanistan / Iraq 20 year weaponized waste of people and money that leaves the area devastated. I feel stupid suggesting negotiations to a pit of vipers, but that is what it has to be - that or disaster.
Also, as a New Yorker, I would love to seize luxury properties of Russian oligarchs here and use them to house the homeless who are flooding the subways. Same for properties of Saudi oil princes who own luxury real estate here and have been bombing Yemen for years. But they do not count, since the Yemenis are poor and not white, and the Saudis are our BFFs.
Sonia Cobbins
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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As a person who is internationalist, I have great hesitation with solidarity with Ukraine. My family suffered under US Marine occupation in the Dominican Republic in 1965. The US government spokespeople have no right to criticize Russia when the US government intervened in the Caribbean and Latin America numerous times without regard to the well-being of those people--perhaps being non-white they don't matter.
So, explain to me the existence of fascist militias (Azov Battalion-an inspiration for the violent Right here the US- and the mistreatment of non-white refugees by Polish and Ukrainian authorities. I was asked to march on Sunday in support of Ukraine. I stated I refuse. Though Russia is a bully in this situation, the Ukrainian government is not innocent and the Western media hands are dirty. I'd like a response to my concerns of white supremacy in Ukraine which has a long history, dating from some collaboration with Nazis and in Soviet times with the harassment of African students in the 1960's or will I get silence.
Melvin Hugo Carlos Pritchard,
San Francisco
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What a confused article. As citizens of the US we have responsibility for what our government does. Hence we need to be focusing on what we can pressure our government to stop contributing to the crisis and play a constructive role.
see “Donbass Seasons”. (English subtitles)
Ben Bath
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
Ukraine in Our Hearts -- cartoon by Pat Bagley
Pat Bagley
February 24, 2022
The Salt Lake Tribune
Re: Arms Industry Sees Ukraine Conflict as an Opportunity, Not a Crisis
I am too old and don't have the energy to get a "Movement" started. But this should not be hard for someone. Stop using murderous euphemisms as if they explained reality.
STOP using the word "defense" when talking about arms, military, killing, wars, etc. If you are using a quote, put "(sic)" after the word "defense." START using "defense" for real defense and security; i.e. health care, environmental issues, education, housing, food, infrastructure, etc. You may have to add your definitions in parentheses at first, until it becomes routine.
Progressives and progressive media should not be using euphemisms for killing as if they have some positive meanings.
Arlene Halfon
MAGA Dilemma -- cartoon by Rex A. Jones
Rex A. Jones
March 9, 2022
Krazy Kartwonz Political Cartoons
Re: This is How We Defeat Putin and Other Petrostate Autocrats
The U.S. and most of Europe are also petrostates and members of Nato. The U.S./Nato are complicit in Putin's criminal, illegal and counterproductive invasion of the Ukraine. Nato expansion to the Ukraine could have been blocked in a negotiated settlement. Now militarism, the enemy of climate security, is reinforced.
In addition, the U.S. government materially supports petrostate Saudi Arabia's genocidal war against the people of Yemen. The biggest obstacle to preventing climate catastrophe, the Military Industrial Complex and militarism, have long been a blind spot in McKibben’s analysis.
David Schwartzman
Re: Congress Just Recognized Lynching as a Hate Crime. Here’s What That Means.
How did they get republicans to vote for this?
Timothy Page
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
Re: How Union Drives in Mexico Help All Workers
The Mexican Solidarity Project has been supporting this grassroots drive to create independent unions in Mexico. This is Solidarity! PUEDES USAR GOOGLE TRANSLATE PARA ESPANOL.
Mexican Solidarity Coalition / Coalicion en Solidaridad con Mexico
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
Re: The Lords of Baseball Think You’re Stupid
A mentor of mine once told me when management and labor are battling, always side with labor.
"Manfred is an arsonist who wants you to think he is a firefighter. Even if you take him at his word that the lockout was necessary (you should not), his actions since imposing it have been farcical. Manfred’s side did not issue a collective bargaining proposal to the MLB Players Association for 43 whole days after the Commissioner of Baseball said in his first letter that the lockout was meant to “jumpstart” things."
Tom Koecke
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
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“The lockout is [Major League Baseball Commissioner] Manfred and the owners’ concoction. It is right there in the word: The league locked out its players when the last Basic Agreement expired. MLB did not have to do that, players were not poised to walk out on strike, and the 2022 season could’ve gone ahead while the parties worked on a new one....”
Norm Littlejohn
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
Re: A Labor Movement to Challenge the Billionaires
Class struggle unionism is just super syndicalism without class struggle politics: lots of posturing, lots of impotence.
John Case
Re: How Odetta Revolutionized Folk Music
Yep! I loved her, learned most of those songs from her albums and got to stage-manage for her whenever she played at Cincinnati Symphony Hall.
Deb Louis
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
Re: Technology Is Terrifying in Steven Soderbergh’s Kimi
(posting on Portside Culture)
“The script, written by David Koepp, is an updated Rear Window set firmly in our COVID present: A woman, shored up by months of social distancing, is intent on isolating herself from the world completely. Angela Childs (played by Zoë Kravitz) is an agoraphobic audio analyst ensconced in a Seattle loft.
She interprets recordings for a tech company that makes an Alexa-esque device called “Kimi.” Like all the other home assistants running people’s lives, Kimi is a squat, nondescript speaker that turns on your lights for you while listening to everything you say; it’s even better at spying than Jimmy Stewart was with his telephoto lens back in 1954.”
Van Caldwell
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
When War Makes a Child -- poem by Tatiana Dolgushina
Tatiana Dolgushina
March 6, 2022
[Tatiana Dolgushina: “Russia and Ukraine are both my homeland, and I am a child refugee of the Soviet Union collapse of the ’90s. I was born in Russia and grew up in both countries before having to leave due to increasing violence and after my father was kidnapped in Ukraine. My poems deal with forever losing one’s home, the violent effect of war on a child, and the confusion and the loss that a child experiences before they can understand any of it. The western world has little understanding of witnessing war on their doorsteps, especially when young and vulnerable. The current Russia-Ukraine war has brought up many memories and emotions for me, recreating my childhood experiences all over again. I fear for the children and their families who are undergoing the same trauma that I experienced, which will displace and haunt them for the rest of their lives.”]
Tell Starbucks to Stop Union Busting
Starbucks is the perfect example of a “progressive” company saying one thing to the public and another thing behind closed doors.
Starbucks is giving the world a classic example of why we're demanding the rules be rewritten so workers who want a union can have one. On February 8th, almost the entire union organizing committee that formed at the Memphis, TN Starbucks / Poplar & Highland store was fired with flimsy excuses—a clear attack on their right to form a union.
Just a few weeks earlier—on January 17th, Martin Luther King Jr. Day—the organizing committee spoke with news outlets about their plans to join together in union.
"Starbucks is trying to silence us, but just let it be known, we will not be silenced," said Nikki Taylor, Starbucks Shift Supervisor in Memphis who is a member of the union organizing committee (More Perfect Union).
TELL STARBUCKS: Reinstate those Memphis workers you fired and stop union-busting! Starbucks workers nationwide are joining the #UnionsForAll movement.
They’re running the same backward anti-worker games as other greedy corporations like Amazon. Workers deserve #UnionsForAll. Tell them to stop union-busting.
Taking feminism back to its radical roots (Verso Books)
Taking International Women's Day back to its radical roots, we bring you books that advance the ideas of revolutionary feminism. See our reading here.
This week we publish two books that we're really excited about. Originally published in French in 1974, Feminism or Death: How the Women’s Movement Can Save the Planet by Françoise d’Eaubonne proposed a politics of ecofeminism that went on to define the movement. Never before published in English, this edition situates d’Eaubonne’s work within current feminist theory.
Second, Making Space: Women and the Man Made Environment. This pioneering work, first published in 1984, challenges us to look at how the built environment impacts on women’s lives. Written collaboratively by the feminist collective Matrix, this book provide a full blown critique of the patriarchal built environment.
Both feature on our 10 Books to Read on International Women's Day reading list.
Verso Books
6 Meard Street
London, W1F 0EG
United Kingdom
RKM
Offset, 1974
United States
24062
On March 8, 1857, women from the garment and textile industry in New York demonstrated to protest low wages, the 12-hour workday and increasing workloads. They asked for improved working conditions and equal pay for all working women. Their march was dispersed by the police. Some of the women were arrested and some were injured. Three years later, in March 1860, these women formed their own union and again called for their demands to be met.
On March 8, 1908, thousands of women from the needles trade industry demonstrated for the same demands. They also asked for laws against child labor and laws for the right of women to vote. They declared March 8 to be Women's Day.
In 1910, Clara Zetkin, a German labor leader, proposed that March 8 be proclaimed International Women's Day in memory of those women who had fought for better lives. For almost 80 years, March 8 has been celebrated in many countries, but has only been commemorated widely in the United States since 1970 with the development of the Women's Liberation Movement.
Center for the Study of Political Graphics
3916 Sepulveda Blvd, Suite 103
Culver City, CA 90230
Monday, March 14th, 2022, at 7:30pm.
Saint Mark's Church
1625 Locust Street
Philadelphia, PA 19103
A free concert for peace.
Donations for emergency relief fund for Ukraine are only suggested but not required. Please join us!
Philadelphia Orchestra Musicians
The Philadelphia Orchestra
Curtis Institute of Music
For this year’s meeting of the UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW66), the thematic focus is gender equality in the context of climate change. RLS and the global women’s rights group MADRE will be supporting indigenous and local women’s representatives participating in CSW. RLS will also host a Parallel Event on March 14 (10-11:30am ET) — “Not Without Us! Pathways to a Feminist Just Transition,” which will examine the need to transform society and the economy to ensure gender equality and a truly feminist just transition away from a high carbon economy. Read more and register to attend here.
Just Transition is not only about the transfer of the energy sector, it’s a just transition to a new form of society and economic activity. This session will advance the understanding of the potential of a feminist just transition and how it could lead to a higher level policy change and climate justice.
Based on examples, the event will explore what kinds of just transitions hold the potential to achieve a social-ecological transformation and why changing the value of different kinds of work, including unpaid care work, and sectors might be necessary in order to achieve low-carbon sustainable development.
Speakers at this event will include:
- Ndivile Mokoena, Gender CC Southern Africa
- Dunja Krause, UN Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD)
- Melissa Moreano, Critical Geography Collective Ecuador
- Lucy Mulenkei, MADRE
- David Williams, Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung New York (facilitator)
Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung
275 Madison Ave., #2114
New York, NY 10016
United States
Angela Davis: In Conversation - March 14 (Toronto Public Library)
Monday, March 14, 2022 AT 7 PM – 8 PM
American political activist, philosopher, academic and author Dr. Angela Y. Davis joins Black Lives Matter Canada co-founder Sandy Hudson for a special in-conversation event.
**Click here to register and tune in LIVE on March 14: https://www.crowdcast.io/e/tpl_angeladavis
Angela Davis has spent more than 50 years at the forefront of Black Liberation, Feminist, Queer, and prison abolitionist movements. Her seminal book, Angela Davis: An Autobiography, originally published in 1974 and edited by Toni Morrison, captures Davis's formative years as a human rights activist and the journey that led her to become one of the most respected and recognized political activists of her generation.
Dr. Davis's newest book, co-written alongside Gina Dent, Erica R. Meiners and Beth E. Richie, Abolition. Feminism. Now., deftly links together the history of abolitionist movements and the important role that Queer, anti-capitalist, and Women of Colour continue to play in vibrant community-based organizing.
Dr. Angela Y. Davis discusses her life-long dedication to activism and resistance with host Sandy Hudson.
A Concert for Ukraine - March 14 (Metropolitan Opera)
On Monday, March 14, at 6PM ET, the Metropolitan Opera will present a benefit performance to support Ukrainian citizens under attack, with all ticket sales and donations going to support relief efforts in Ukraine. Met Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin will lead the Met Orchestra and Chorus and star soloists in a 70-minute program, featuring music by Valentin Silvestrov, Barber, Verdi, Strauss, and Beethoven. The soloists will be Lise Davidsen and Elza van den Heever, mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton, tenor Piotr Beczała, bass-baritone Ryan Speedo Green, and Ukrainian bass-baritone Vladyslav Buialskyi, who will lead the Met Chorus in a performance of the Ukrainian national anthem.
A Concert for Ukraine will be broadcast in the U.S. via many of the radio stations that regularly carry the Met’s Saturday Matinee Radio Broadcasts, as well as member stations of National Public Radio. Please check your local listing for details. The concert will be broadcast internationally via the European Broadcasting Union, allowing it to be heard in most countries in the world. The concert will also be carried live on Met Opera Radio on Sirius XM (channel 355) and streamed live here.
For more ways to help the citizens of Ukraine, visit the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine website.
All audience members must be fully vaccinated against Covid-19 and wear face masks at all times inside the Met, except when eating or drinking in designated areas. Booster shots are also required for everyone eligible. For more information on health and safety policies, visit our commitment page.
Why US Prescription Drug Prices are So High… and How to Treat It -- March 15 (Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP) - NY Metro Chapter)
MARCH 15, 2022 AT 7:30 PM
This forum will discuss U.S. prescription drug prices specifically and pharmaceutical industry reform more broadly. Americans pay more than twice the price for the same prescription drugs from the same transnational companies as do the other rich democracies around the world. We are subsidizing the excess profits of the pharmaceutical industry, which has twice the return on investment as the rest of the Fortune 500. We will discuss why this is, and the many harms it causes (to patients especially but also to healthcare providers - including pharmacists - and to the U.S. economy in general). We will address the range of fixes being proposed, including the partial piecemeal reforms under active discussion at the national level (e.g., Medicare being able to negotiate prices, stopping companies from raising prices faster than inflation, some caps on prices or copays for some drugs), as well those in the context of national "Medicare for All" and the New York Health Act (our state single payer).
As always with our forums, action steps will also be suggested.
Confirmed speakers include:
- Alex Lawson executive director of Social Security Works, and leading their Drug Prices Are Too High campaign
- Maurice BP-Weeks, Co-Executive Director Action Center on Race and the Economy (ACRE)+ACRE Institute and coauthor of Poi$on – How Big Pharma’s Racist Price Gouging Kills Black and Brown Folks
- Sa'Ra Skipper, Patient Advocate with T1I-USA/#Insulin4All
- Steve Auerbach, MD, MPH - Physicians for a National Health Program – NYMetro
- Hosted and moderated by Rachel Madley (former PNHP and New York #insulin4all activist; now a staffer with Rep. Pramilla Jayapal)
This event is cosponsored by:
- Doctors For America
- Lower Drug Prices Now
- Social Security Works - and their Drug Prices are Too High campaign
- T1International-USA/#Insulin4All
Holding Israel Accountable - March 16 (Rachel Corrie Foundation for Peace and Justice)
March 16, 2022, 5:00 p.m. PT
Join the Rachel Corrie Foundation for Peace and Justice and Madison-Rafah Sister City Project Wednesday, March 16th, 5:00 PM Pacific Time, for Holding Israel Accountable, a commemorative webinar marking the 19th anniversary of Rachel Corrie’s stand in Gaza.
How do we hold Israel accountable for decades of oppression, displacement, land theft, occupation and loss? At this moment, what are the avenues for seeking peace with justice for Palestinians and Israelis? Five guests, representing many years of experience with this issue, will share their work and current perspectives.
Guest Speakers:
Phyllis Bennis, (Moderaator) Director of the New Internationalism Project at the Institute for Policy Studies, and a Fellow of the Transnational Institute in Amsterdam
Panelists
- Hatem Abudayyeh, son of Palestinian immigrants, Executive Director of Arab American Action Network (AAAN) and part of US Palestinian Community Network (USPCN)
- Lubna Alzaroo, Lecturer at the University of Washington currently researching the connections between settler colonial infrastructure, necropolitics, and the environment in the U.S. and Palestinian context
- Katherine Gallagher, Senior Staff Attorney, Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR)
- Josh Ruebner, Director of Government Relations, Institute for Middle East Understanding (IMEU) and adjunct lecturer in Justice and Peace Studies at Georgetown University
Amnesty International recently published a report calling “Israel’s apartheid against Palestinians a cruel system of domination and a crime against humanity.” Rachel Corrie Foundation March 16th observances are about education, community building, and action. There is work for us all to do – locally, regionally, nationally, and internationally. With perspectives as Palestinians in the diaspora, representatives of solidarity organizations, and scholars, our guest speakers will help those of us at the grassroots level think how to effectively challenge Israel’s apartheid system and crimes against humanity that Amnesty International, other human and legal rights organizations, the Palestinian people, and Israeli activists have called out.
Donations to the Rachel Corrie Foundation on March 16th will benefit the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme.
Rachel Corrie
Born and raised in Olympia, Washington, human rights activist and observer Rachel Corrie went to Gaza in 2003 with the International Solidarity Movement, a Palestinian-led movement committed to resisting the long-entrenched and systematic oppression and dispossession of the Palestinian population, using non-violent, direct-action methods and principles. While standing in front of a home threatened with demolition by the Israeli military, Rachel was killed when run over by an armored Caterpillar D9R bulldozer operated by two Israeli soldiers. With annual March 16th remembrances, we at the Rachel Corrie Foundation for Peace and Justice seek to bring attention to the loss of lives, lands, freedoms, and opportunities that have continued since Rachel’s stand in Gaza in 2003 and to build and strengthen the community of constructive, nonviolent resisters of which she was a part.
Madison-Rafah Sister City Project
We are delighted to again co-host our March 16th observance with friends at the Madison-Rafah Sister City Project. MRSCP was founded in 2003 by concerned citizens in Madison, Wisconsin, to forge person-to-person relationships with Rafah, Palestine, to increase public awareness of the Israeli-Palestinian issue, and to influence public policy for the benefit of both peoples. Until COVID-19, MRSCP annually hosted an in-person Rachel Corrie commemorative event in Madison. Visit the Madison-Rafah Sister City website to learn more about their work.
Co-sponsors
We are grateful for the support of the following partners who have helped with technical support and getting the word out!
- Americans United for Palestinian Human Rights http://www.auphr.org/
- Bright Stars of Bethlehem-Madison brightstarsbethlehem.com
- Bishop’s Committee for Justice and Peace in the Holy Land https://holylandjustice.org/bishops-committee/
- Task Force for Palestinian Human Rights, Episcopal Diocese of Oregon https://diocese-oregon.org/
- Friends of Sabeel North America (FOSNA) https://www.fosna.org/
- The Gaza Mental Health Foundation https://www.gazamentalhealth.org/
- Jewish Voice for Peace – Madison https://www.facebook.com/jvpmadison/
- Jewish Voice for Peace-Tacoma https://www.facebook.com/Tacoma.JVP/
- Jewish Voice for Peace – Seattle https://www.facebook.com/JVPSeattle/
- Students for Justice in Palestine at UW-Madison https://www.facebook.com/SJPatUW/
- Students United for Palestinian Equal Rights – University of Washington (SUPER-UW) https://www.facebook.com/SuperUw/
- Tree of Life – West Coast
- US Palestinian Community Network https://uspcn.org
Visit our website for developing info about this event and to learn more about the work of the Rachel Corrie Foundation for Peace and Justice
Nation Conversation: A Black Guy’s Guide to the Constitution - March 16
March 16, 2022 -- 12:00 PM PT | 3:00 PM ET
ONLINE
$10
Elie Mystal, The Nation’s justice correspondent—covering the courts, the criminal justice system, and politics—has quickly become one of America’s most sought-after legal minds offering cutting commentary with an eloquence and ferocity unique in this moment.
His new book Allow Me to Retort is an essential argument about what rights we have, what rights Republicans are trying to take away, and how to stop them. Mystal explains how to protect the rights of women and people of color instead of cowering to the absolutism of gun owners and bigots. He explains the legal way to stop everything from police brutality to political gerrymandering. He strips out all of the fancy jargon conservatives like to hide behind and lays bare the truth of their project to keep America forever tethered to its slaveholding past.
On March 16, Mystal will bring his trademark humor and deep expertise to bear in conversation with the eminent legal writer Dahlia Lithwick, whose incisive writings on the courts and law for Slate magazine have helped shaped the way a generation understands their rights. Please join Mystal and Lithwick in discussing antidotes to the poison of our current political system.
There will be ample time devoted to audience questions and engagement. All proceeds directly support The Nation’s journalism. We hope you will join us!
Co-sponsored by The New Press.
A book talk with author, Ellen Schrecker
Join author Ellen Schrecker and historian Jeremy Varon to discuss Schrecker's The Lost Promise: American Universities in the 1960s.
The Lost Promise is a magisterial examination of the turmoil that rocked American universities in the 1960s, with a unique focus on the complex roles played by professors as well as students.
The 1950s through the early 1970s are widely seen as American academia’s golden age, when universities—well funded and viewed as essential for national security, economic growth, and social mobility—embraced an egalitarian mission. Swelling in size, schools attracted new types of students and professors, including radicals who challenged their institutions’ calcified traditions. But that halcyon moment soon came to a painful and confusing end, with consequences that still afflict the halls of ivy. In The Lost Promise, Ellen Schrecker—our foremost historian of both the McCarthy era and the modern American university—delivers a far-reaching examination of how and why it happened.
Schrecker illuminates how US universities’ explosive growth intersected with the turmoil of the 1960s, fomenting an unprecedented crisis where dissent over racial inequality and the Vietnam War erupted into direct action. Torn by internal power struggles and demonized by conservative voices, higher education never fully recovered, resulting in decades of underfunding and today’s woefully inequitable system. As Schrecker’s magisterial history makes blazingly clear, the complex blend of troubles that disrupted the university in that pivotal period haunts the ivory tower to this day.
Ellen Schrecker is a retired professor of history at Yeshiva University and the author of numerous books, including No Ivory Tower: McCarthyism and the Universities, Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America, and The Lost Soul of Higher Education: Corporatization, the Assault on Academic Freedom, and the End of the American University.
Jeremy Varon is an Associate Professor of History at the New School for Social Research and Eugene Lang College, specializing in modern US history, European and American intellectual history, and German history. In 2004 he published Bringing the War Home: The Weather Underground, the Red Army Faction, and Revolutionary Violence in the Sixties and Seventies (University of California Press). He co-edits The Sixties: A Journal of History, Politics and Culture, an academic journal that features interdisciplinary and international research on the “long Sixties” (1954-1975).
This event is presented in Zoom. Live closed captioning will be available.
Tamiment Library & Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives/ NYU Special Collections
Elmer Holmes Bobst Library
70 Washington Square South, 2nd Floor
New York, NY 10012
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