After Mitchell and Jessen: Why the Truth of U.S. Torture Still Matters by Rob Crawford  published in the Seattle Times, page A9, Tuesday September 5, 2017 with the title “Put an end to the crime of torture”     The fight over civil war monuments reveals a crucial fact about our political culture: how we remember history matters.  Unjust institutions and the ideologies that support them benefit from a distorted, forgotten or unknown history.  White supremacy is Exhibit A.  On the other side, every movement attempting to right past wrongs must engage in a struggle over how the past is represented. The anti-torture movement, working to ensure that the torture regime put in place during the Bush-Cheney administration never happens again, faces…

To protect our planet, and ourselves, we need to ban the nuclear bomb by Beth Brunton |First published in Real Change August 2nd, 2017 reprinted by permission of author   Are you doing your best to protect our people, planet and just prosperity? Yes, thank you. You reduce or recycle, you bike or bus, you vote for the greenest candidates and policies to prevent climate change and other disasters. What else could you do? You could add to your to-do list: ban nuclear bombs to keep our people and planet safe from mass destruction. Nuclear weapons are a greater threat than ever, but you can join the new nuclear abolition movement growing here and all over the world. How can one bomb destroy…

The Art of Unarmed Uprising a review of Mark Engler and Paul Engler. This Is An Uprising: How Nonviolent Revolt Is Shaping the Twenty-first Century.(New York: Nation Books. 2016) by John M Repp The Engler brothers start their story with an account of the campaign of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) to end segregation in Birmingham, Alabama in the spring of 1963. The campaign was very carefully planned. The strategy was to create a public crisis and a media event using a combination of several nonviolent tactics like lunch-counter sit-ins, boycotts of merchants who displayed “whites only” signs, marches and the intention to fill the jails. Martin Luther King, Jr., the leader of SCLC, expected someone would be killed…

4-chart handout Leopold How Wall Street Is Strip-mining America a review of Les Leopold’s Runaway Inequality: An Activist’s Guide to Economic Justice (New York: Labor Institute Press, 2015) by John M Repp On the back cover of the Runaway Inequality, from a shop steward: “Look, I’m not a reader. In fact, I hate to read. But I love reading this book. It’s written for people like me. I can’t put it down.” Runaway Inequality tells us that economic inequality is much, much worse that we think it is. The wage-gap ratio is the ratio between the income of the 200 highest paid CEOs of large American corporations and the income of the average non-supervisory worker at those companies. Leopold cites…

What the UN is Doing Now to Prohibit Ban Nuclear Weapons and How You Can Help by Lilly Adams   In March, 132 states took a pivotal step forward by participating in historic negotiations to ban nuclear weapons. The US was not one of these countries. Negotiations will form, “a legally binding instrument to prohibit nuclear weapons, leading towards their total elimination.” (United Nations. Conference to Prohibit Nuclear Weapons, Leading Towards their Total Elimination. Online at https://www.un.org/disarmament/ptnw/)The US boycott of these negotiations is an embarrassing and irresponsible decision, but will not hinder the momentum of this global movement. Negotiations were set in motion after a UN General Assembly decision in late 2016. This is the culmination of 72 years of…

Letter to the Editor of the Lewis County Chronicle on the so-called justice system by Larry Kershner There have been recent calls to impeach President Trump for obstruction of justice. However, the whole American political and so-called justice system is itself an obstruction of justice. I recently had the pleasure of being a defendant in the federal court system. The current criminal legal system is designed not to produce what is right or just or fair. The current system criminalizes political dissent. Dissent which opposes and tries to change the dominant social order or policies of the government should be protected by the First Amendment of the Constitution. The US criminal legal system is political, the clear intention of which…

Chicago and Martin Luther King, Jr:  What Can We Learn? by Mary Lou Finley  It was June of 1965, just three months after the march across the Selma bridge, when I headed for Chicago, a newly-minted graduate of Stanford University.    I had desperately wanted to work in the South for the civil rights movement during my college years, but one thing and another got in the way—mostly my parents’ objections. I was, however,  determined that when I graduated, I would find a way.  Meanwhile, one of my college classmates from our Methodist church group, two years older and already in Chicago as a volunteer for the West Side Christian Parish’s social gospel ministry, urged me to come to Chicago instead. …

Where Are We Going Politically? by Stan Sorscher              first published in Huffington Post, May 2, 2017, updated May 5, 2017 Governance is all about power relationships. Donald Trump’s first few disorienting months leave many people wondering what governing looks like any more. It’s time to look away from the political spectacle, and take a deep breath. Consider two opposing value statements.   “We all do better” Value Statement The purpose of our economy is to raise our standard of living. Here, “standard” applies to our community and our country. We value opportunity and fairness, stronger communities, shared prosperity, and investment in the future. All work has dignity. We are each other’s co-workers, neighbors, friends, relatives, and customers. We all do…