The Revolution Continues blog is news, views, opinion and other expressions of hope from a leftist point-of-view. (We are not affiliated with any candidate, political party or organization. All are welcome.)
Childhood’s End: Three Years of Murdering, Maiming, Bombing, Starving, and Deporting Children
by C. A. Matthews
Some anniversaries aren’t worth celebrating, but they are worth noting.
I participated in a short interview with a local university sociology professor and his student this past week. One of the questions they asked me was: “How have you changed personally because of joining this (pro-Palestine) movement?”
Three years into the Israeli genocide of the Palestinian people and what hasn’t changed me?
Things certainly aren’t going back to the way they were prior to October 7, 2023. Little did I—or anyone, really—know that we’d be observing a livestreamed genocide on our computing devices for three straight years, all the while observing nothing positive in our governments’ reactions to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians—and so many of them children—at the hands of the IDF. I don’t know how being exposed to such a lack of compassion, empathy, and concern for others on such an immense scale wouldn’t change a person’s outlook on life unless the person was already spiritually and morally dead inside.
Three years of knowing that your government doesn’t give a rat’s ass about the health, safety, and security of children in Gaza—or the West Bank or Lebanon or Iran or Cuba or Venezuela, for that matter.
Three years of watching these little ones die from preventable diseases because your “ally” Israel won’t allow sufficient food, medicines, medical supplies, or Doctors Without Borders from entering their open air prison.
Three years of realizing the horrors of children and adults trapped under tons of rubble having to have emergency amputations without anesthesia...
...Honestly, I don’t know anymore if it’s just me who has gone insane because I can’t stand knowing so many horrific details about what’s happening in the world, or it’s the rest of the world that is insane for allowing them to occur in the first place...
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Migrant children
without parents or adult sponsors are being held in locked
"facilities" in Texas. Essentially, these places are
prisons since children's camps don't usually lock up their campers to prevent
any contact from the outside world. No, this isn't an old news story that
happened under Trump's neglectful eye. This is same activity still happening under
the auspices of the current neglectful regime.
The more things
change, the more they remain the same (if not grow worse).
I realize many
of you are holding out hope that visas will be granted to family members to come and claim these kids as soon as possible. But if our history gives
us any clues, we know this isn't going happen--Biden's "promise" or
not. How do we know this? Because this is not the first time America hasn't
open its arms to embrace those who are suffering from the affects of war,
poverty, and persecution.
One thing that
has stayed with me after taking my first course to become an accredited
immigration advocate is that US immigration law hasn't changed much since it
was first laid out in the 1920s. The first US immigration laws and quotas were created to stop
the influx of "genetically inferior races" from such scummy places
like Sicily and Eastern Europe. One hundred years later, it is still perfectly legal to discriminate
against immigrants based solely on their place of origin via our quota system. (Too bad if that
country is made up of mostly black and brown peoples who don't practice a religion we like, but those are the breaks.)
Of course,
there were some immigration laws made before the 20th century. The most famous
was the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. This law was meant to stop the "invasion" of California, which began in the 1870s by Chinese
laborers who came to help build our country's railroad system. We thanked these
Chinese immigrants for all their hard work with low wages and forbidding them to become naturalized citizens until 1943. We further went on to perfect our treatment of
Asian-Americans by interring Japanese-Americans in prison camps during World War II when FDR signed Executive Order 9066.
War and economics makes racial discrimination
necessary, after all.
The next
time you buy take-out burgers or chicken, don't forget to give thanks for all
the predominantly Central American migrant farm and food processing workers who butcher and process all those
dead cows and birds for you to chow down on. Don't forget to give
thanks for all those ill-treated Chinese railroad workers who built the
infrastructure that allows the meat processors to ship meat across the country
to your local restaurant, too.
Another amazing
fact I've learned from my immigration studies is that the US doesn't take in the
most refugees in the world like we've been led to believe. We're actually way down
the list--we don't even make the top ten. Our neighbor to the north, Canada, outdoes us in accepting refugees
and immigrants. Believe it or not (and many won't believe it), the US is not being
flooded with immigrants, but give the climate catastrophe and the rising oceans
some time and then…?
Most people
displaced from their homelands by natural disasters, wars, persecutions, etc., end
up living next door. For instance, Venezuelans have flooded into Colombia by
the millions and Syrians… Well, those Syrians we haven't bombed this past week have
migrated to the neighboring countries of Turkey, Jordan, and Lebanon.
The US has blockaded
Venezuela and bombed Syria, yet we don't open our arms wide to accept all the
people we've hurt who are fleeing troubles exacerbated by our actions. Quite
the opposite. We've created bans to prevent them from coming here. We've begrudged
helping out the UN when it comes to assisting these refugees, too, by not paying
our full dues.
For those who
were expecting Biden to enact a "kindler, gentler" immigration policy
with the "kids in cages" being set freed (or not being locked up in
the first place), it's time to stop fooling yourself. US immigration policy
hasn't fundamentally changed in over a hundred years. It's not going to be
changed by the looks of things coming (or rather not coming) out of this White House, either. The Biden
administration has accepted many contributions from the various corporations of
the military-industrial complex as well as the private immigration detention
center lobbyists, so why would Biden change immigration and war-making policies
that make him and his friends rich?
Locking up predominantly
poor and non-white human beings is what America does best. Take a good hard look
at our prison-industrial complex and how it mimics slavery. Obviously, we're not ready to change our ways.
Why should we change when locking up people helps to create a slave class of prison
workers forced to work for little or nothing? Immigration laws that create more
free labor make capitalists wealthier. Non-billionaires don't have
much say so in the matter. The Citizens United Supreme Court ruling proves this to be the
case.
In the coming
months, be ready for the suppression of immigration horrors and drone bombing stories
by the corporate media. Anyone who doesn't think that cut-out hearts placed
on the White House lawn cures a vast variety of societal ills is, of course,
suspect.
That makes me one of the most "suspicious" characters around. I believe protecting human rights is far more important than fatuous
news stories about rich neoliberals pretending to care about anyone other than themselves as they install fake candy
hearts in DC and continue to lock up kids in cages. I think history will
bear me out on this, too.
"The Biden administration is instead trying to sell us an image of a kinder, gentler imprisonment." -- Moustafa Bayoumi
I’ll get right to the point: Asylum-seekers in ICE detention centers
in Texas and across the Southern United States are living in dire
conditions--and it’s not just because of the cold weather.
According to reports, ICE detention guards are retaliating
against families and children who dare mention the freezing
temperatures, unhygienic conditions, or lack of water. When detainees
voice concerns about the cold, ICE agents have reportedly blasted fans
or thrown blankets in the trash.
What’s happening in Texas is a crisis for so many people, and what’s
happening in ICE detention centers is just outright cruel. The truth is,
the system was designed this way, which is why I’m calling on you to
take action now.
Ted Cruz fleeing Texas with his family during a state-wide emergency
is a mockery of the thousands of families and children seeking safety
who’ve been separated and left to suffer in ICE detention centers.
Now is the time to turn our attention away from politicians
and policies that don’t serve us, and towards a future where families
are reunited and safe.
Weathering a state-wide emergency during a global pandemic is hard
enough. Now imagine being a parent separated from your child as you’re
detained in an ICE facility--without heat or water.
It’s time to put an end to the immigration system that
prioritizes profits over people, separates children from parents, and
leaves asylum-seekers out to freeze in conditions more dangerous than
the ones they risked their lives to flee from.
If the last week has reminded us of anything, it’s that change comes from within. It’s
going to take every one of us to reunite families, end ICE’s legacy of
cruelty, and build a nation where safety is more than an empty promise.
Thanks for all that you do,
Paola Luisi, Director
Families Belong Together
***
From Ultraviolet:
For Black women, pregnancy could be a
deadly proposition, as they are three to four times more likely than
white women to die during childbirth. The United States has the worst maternal mortality rate in the developed world, and it continues to rise. We can and must do better.
The Momnibus is a package that includes
multiple pieces of legislation with solutions to this crisis, including
investing in community-based care for Black mothers, improving maternal
health data collection, improving maternal health outcomes for
incarcerated mothers, supporting programs to improve mental health for
postpartum mothers, and examining policies on continuing health
insurance coverage, including Medicaid, up to one year postpartum. In
addition, the package includes solutions specific to the COVID-19
pandemic, including research and data on vaccinations for pregnant and
lactating people.
The legislation would not only protect
Black women's lives during what should be a joyful event, but addresses
preventable complications and improves maternal care at hospitals for
Black women. It would center the well-being of Black women, who--because
of medical racism and violence, are often not believed when they
experience problematic symptoms or pregnancy complications, and are
denied access to expedient care as a result. This is true across class,
and even impacted Serena Williams when she gave birth to her daughter
and had a near-death experience.2 Will you add your name to help save the lives of Black pregnant people?
To be clear, this is not inevitable,
this is intentional. The maternal health crisis in the U.S. is the
result of decades of medical sexism and political negligence that has sacrificed
the health, autonomy, and well-being of women. Medical research and
interventions often lack a gender focus. Women are routinely disbelieved
or gaslit when they seek out medical care.
Meanwhile, conservative politicians
have worked overtime to throw up barriers to accessing basic health
care, like birth control or abortion, all while closing clinics in rural
and urban areas that serve vulnerable populations. When you add in the
centuries of systemic racism that pervades our health care system, which
routinely sees Black people's pain or medical needs as less urgent than
that of white people, the weight of this history of racism and sexism
is especially heavy for Black pregnant women.
Food
movements across Africa and hundreds of groups around the world are
protesting Gates Foundation’s plans to transform African food systems.
They say Gates' efforts to push chemical-intensive industrial
agriculture in Africa are harming, not helping, small
farmers, communities and the climate.
These issues have been ignored by media outlets that are rolling out the
red carpet for Gates’ new book, "How to Avoid a Climate Disaster," and
not asking critical questions.
In a new article today, Stacy Malkan examines the evidence that Gates Foundation's plans to remake food systems in Africa will hurt the climate. Where’s the data on Gates' “green revolution” for Africa? Also
today, Timothy Wise, a researcher with the Institute for Agriculture,
posted a new article about his ongoing efforts to track results of
the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa -- and he is not finding evidence of progress. The new analysis is based on documents U.S. Right to Know obtained by FOIA. When Google decides what you read: In case you missed
it, U.S. Right to Know and other news outlets are under siege by
algorithm changes at Google that are not transparent and offer no path
for appeal. The Freedom of the Press Foundation reports on the story
here, When algorithms come for journalists.
Please share our work and invite your networks to sign up for our newsletter so we can bring our reporting directly to their inboxes, too. More public health news of note:
EPA’s assessments of chemicals draws criticism from its own scientists — U.S. Right to Know
Environmental group charges EPA with ignoring evidence of cancer — The Intercept
Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald): Make sure to say “kids in cages” as many times as you can for the next few weeks because starting on January 20, 2021, that phrase is going to disappear from the lexicon so fast it’s going to make your head spin, even though there will still be plenty of kids in cages. (Twitter response to news that Cecilia Muñoz, a defender of family separations under Obama, will join Biden's transition team.)
If you ever grew up with siblings/cousins/friends close by, I'm sure you
heard these three little words from time to time. You probably grew to hate
them and the attitude that came along with them as much as I did.
"Ha-ha!
Told you so!"
Sometimes, however,
there's just no other way to get a message across to people than to simply tell them that you've given them all the information they needed previously but that
they keep stubbornly refusing to accept it. This is when those three
little irritating words can come in handy:
Told you so.
This week the
"told you so" information is so obvious, so clear and undeniable that
even a blind bat wearing dark glasses on a moonless night wouldn't be able to
miss it. But I'm certain they'll be more than a few American neoliberals who'll
fail to understand how much they've been used by the corrupt system and will
cry out, "Uh-uh!" like any kid would upon being told these irritating
three little words.
So, I won't
continue to hammer you with that phrase if you promise to watch, read, listen
and comprehend the information available from the links below. Promise? Good.
You deserve to be informed, and you need to know that you (and others like you) were
duped on purpose so you would help install yet another corrupt
politician-puppet to serve the needs of the oligarchs and plutarchs.
It's not that
you're a "bad person" or stupid or anything like that. You have been
tricked, used and manipulated by greedy people and their well-oiled political machine. The ball is now in your court. It's
time for you to wake up to that fact and live your life in freedom and in
truth. Continuing to play their game will only lead you to future heartache and
the possible end of our planet.
Nothing will
get better in this country or this world if we continue to lie to ourselves and
allow others to manipulate us for their own selfish ends. This applies to
politician-puppets who take large sums of cash from the fossil fuel industry and the military industrial complex double-fold.
Break free of
their propaganda and start questioning everything you hear, have ever heard, or
will ever hear from the next occupant of the White House. Your mind is too beautiful of a thing to waste on believing the talking points of conniving con artists for the
corporations.
Learn more from following videos, articles and blog links.
Francesca Fiorentini contemplates if Biden will be able to overcome his centrist (i.e., Republican-lite) leanings to stop fascism.
"Biden World" Blames Progressives for Their Losses! (Republican ex-governor of Ohio John Kasich, who spoke at the convention, tells Democrats that progressives are the party's problem.) https://youtu.be/7-uY7AxHpEg
It’s been less than a week since the presidential results were
confirmed, but already the fossil fuel lobby in Canada is devising a
plan to pressure Joe Biden into completing the Keystone XL tar sands
pipeline.
The worst part is, they’re feeling optimistic.
Not only are tar sands companies banking on Keystone XL, they’re also
hard at work trying to push through another tar sands pipeline: the
Line 3 pipeline in northern Minnesota.
Our movement is up against massive fossil fuel corporations with
unlimited sums of money to lobby the United States and Canadian
governments. We need to send a strong message to Joe Biden right away that stopping these pipelines is non-negotiable:
As a Dakota elder who has been fighting Keystone XL for 12 years, I
know that while TC Energy and Big Oil may have the money to push policy
and politicians in favor of their profits – people power is capable of
defeating even the most entrenched special interests.
With your help we can make sure that Joe Biden honors his campaign
promises and the Indigenous communities who made his victory possible.
Every signature puts a name to the outrage Biden can expect if he
chooses to put fossil fuel profits before Indigenous communities, our
water, and the climate.
It’s a testament to our movement that despite Trump’s best efforts,
we were able to hold off this pipeline for the last four years. But time is running out.
TC Energy began preliminary construction in March without all the
required permits, and every day that goes by makes our work even harder.
C.A., our work doesn’t stop with Keystone XL. We must make sure that Biden not only blocks this pipeline, but every single one after that.
Over 50,000 people have signed the Promise to Protect and are ready
and committed to take creative resistance on the ground against Keystone
XL or any other pipeline that threatens our climate and communities.
But since we cannot gather in person, adding your name to this
petition today is one of the best ways to show our collective strength.
So thank you for signing the petition.
Together I know we can win.
Wopida,
Faith Spotted Eagle Brave Heart Society
***
From Food and Water Watch:
Over
the past four years, the Trump administration has shamelessly fueled
the climate crisis by unleashing a fracking free-for-all on public
lands.
At a time when the climate crisis demands that we move away
from fossil fuels to clean, renewable energy, it is outrageous and
irresponsible to expand fracking and drilling on public lands. It’s time
to put an end to this recklessness.
Together, we can move forward, towards the climate future we all deserve, but we
need President-elect Biden to take bold, immediate climate action by
banning fracking and stopping new fossil fuel extraction on public lands.
With the new administration, we have a renewed opportunity, and we
demand a new era in the climate fight. It’s time to take on the fossil
fuel industry directly.
Fracking
is a dangerous method of extracting oil and gas that escalates climate
change and pollution. Drilling and fracking bring water contamination,
air pollution, earthquakes and massive amounts of methane leakage.
Fracking hurts people and communities.
Yet Big Oil & Gas has been allowed — and even encouraged by Trump
and his cronies — to decimate public lands, despite these places being
set aside by past generations for protection and the enjoyment of future
generations.
Enough is enough. The inherent danger of fracking
means that no set of regulations can ever make it safe for public health
or our environment. Banning fracking on public lands is a no-brainer;
we need President-elect Biden to act immediately when he takes office on
January 20.
Food
& Water Action helped achieve the introduction of the first federal
bill to ban fracking in 2014. And as more and more people demand real
action against fracking, we're ramping up our national campaign to ban
it now to protect our families and our communities from reckless,
dangerous drilling.
President-elect Biden has a huge opportunity to stand on the right side of history by banning fracking on public lands. In doing so, he would protect our national resources and heritage, and help avert climate chaos.
The
fight for our climate doesn’t end now that the election is over. It’s
time for the new administration to take real action to protect our
environment, and that starts with all of us demanding change and holding
the president-elect accountable!
Wenonah Hauter Founder and Executive Director Food & Water Action and Food & Water Watch
***
Are You Willing To Stand Up For Your Values? (Or will you fall for just about anything the corrupticians throw at you?)
If
you agree that we can't just sit back, fall asleep, and let the
neolibs/neocons destroy our country, our lives, and the planet, then
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