Mexico’s Left Takes to the Street, Celebrates Achievements / by W. T. Whitney Jr

_{^{Supporters of Mexican President Andrés Mexican President Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador stand on a statue’s platform as they cheer him during a march in support of his administration, in Mexico City, Sunday, Nov. 27, 2022. | Fernando Llano/AP}}

“Sometimes there are revolutions but people keep on thinking the same way. But now we are seeing a peacetime transformation process and there is a change of mentality … I said yesterday that we are winning the battle against racism, classism, discrimination. This is not about material things, not about welfare programs. There’s been a change of mentality”.

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) was commenting on events of November 27, which was the fourth anniversary of his taking office. AMLO and his Moreno Party administration had staged a march and then a rally in the Zócalo plaza in Mexico City. They sought to demonstrate the Mexican people’s support for what AMLO calls Mexico’s Fourth Transformation.

Supporters gathered at the Angel of Independence Monument and walked three miles along Reforma Avenue to arrive at the Zócalo. The crowd was such that the walk, with AMLO walking too, lasted five hours. And, “Not even a window was broken,” according to Claudia Sheinbaum, who heads Mexico City’s government.

AMLO spoke before 1.2 million people. He highlighted what he regarded as outstanding achievements of his government and promised that work would be continuing “under the premise of attending first to the poorest and most vulnerable people.” He attached the name “Mexican humanism” to his government’s “socio-political model.” Noting the high representation of youth in the crowd, AMLO proclaimed a “generational change.”

In his remarks, AMLO catalogued achievements in providing for people’s needs. A report from La Jornada news service is the basis for the following summary.

Security is improvising, he indicated. His government “on a daily basis has to confront the scourge of violence; corruption and impunity are not tolerated. Crimes that fall within federal jurisdiction are down 27.3%.

AMLO listed social advances in various areas:

· 35 million families, 85% of the total, directly receive “at least a little portion of the national budget,” and the others benefit from reduced taxes and reduced costs for essentials.

· The minimum salary has more than doubled, “something never seen in the last 40 years” – and will be increasing more in the coming year.

· Labor reforms include secret voting in union elections, elimination of subcontracting, and a doubling of profit-sharing arrangements.

· Almost 28 million new workers are enrolled in social security, and the salaries of workers has reached “historically” high levels. There are 1.3 million new government jobs.

· Now 283,535 single mothers working outside of the home receive 800 pesos each month; 3.7 million families with children in elementary schools receive 1,680 pesos every two months; and 4.2 million upper-level students receive the same amount. Some 410,000 university students from poor families receive 2,450 pesos monthly, 128,950 postgraduate students and researchers receive scholarships.

AMLO emphasized the construction by his government of 145 free public universities where 1,168 professors are teaching and 45,581 young people studying. The aim is to establish 200 such institutions within the so-called “Benito Juárez System” which, according to a government website, is “dedicated to young people excluded by economic reasons” and those whose geographic access to higher education is limited.

The president mentioned that funds are available that enable parents of school children to maintain and rehabilitate 113,971 school buildings. Teachers’ salaries are up 21%, and schools now provide a “labor base” for 650,000 education workers. He noted that his government’s “relation with teachers is one of respect and gratitude … There have been no strikes or work stoppages in the public schools.”

AMLO emphasized that IMSS-Bienestar, the federal healthcare system, has extended into new regions where medical generalists and specialists are for the most part working “two shifts” every day. He is “committed to extending the IMSS-Bienestar system throughout the country to make people’s right to healthcare a reality.”

According to its website, “The IMSS-BIENESTAR Program provides first and second level health care services in its health units. The latter covers the specialties of gynecology-obstetrics, general surgery, internal medicine and pediatrics.” With “43 years of experience,” the program “combines medical care with health promotion actions in the community.” Care is provided gratis to patients without social security benefits.

Mexico’s social security system has expanded; 300,000 handicapped people, mostly children, are receiving more generous pensions and 10.5 million seniors now receive 2,800 pesos bimonthly, with more on the way after January 1, 2023. In a program called “Young People Building the Future,” 2.4 million young people are apprenticing in preparation for future work. The minimum wage they receive is a social security benefit.

AMLO’s reference to a “Fourth Transformation” raises the question of what about the first three transformations. These were three periods of significant change, specifically: independence from Spain 1810-1821; reforms, mainly separation of church and state, undertaken by President Benito Juárez in 1858-1861; and Mexico’s Revolution in 1910-1917 that accounts for the present Constitution.

The march and mass gathering of Moreno and AMLO supporters annoyed individuals such as Sandra Cuevas, the mayor of Cuauhtémoc. She denounced a “march of hate, division, inequality and corruption” while claiming that government officials at all levels and beneficiaries of social programs had been forced to participate.

One observer writes that for Morena to be “winning the streets” doesn’t detract from the advantage conservative political parties enjoy with an overwhelming presence on social media and on newspaper front pages. Their power there, and in their organizations and the judiciary, enables them to “hinder, obstruct, and sabotage” Morena’s work of governing. In any case, opinion polls are pointing to a large Morena Party victory in the elections of 2024.

_{W.T. Whitney Jr. is a retired pediatrician and political journalist living in Maine.}

_{People’s World, November 29, 2022, https://www.peoplesworld.org/}

Review: Being Aware is First Step to Resisting US Militarization / by W.T. Whitney Jr.

_{^{Photograph Source: Jason Eppink – CC BY 2.0}}

The military draft in the United States has disappeared. There’s no major U.S. war and military affairs rate little attention in the media. The U.S. public embraces the pervasive influence of the military-industrial complex across U.S. society. The U.S. Congress seems never to hold back on wildly exorbitant military spending.

Travelers entering North Carolina on Interstate 95 almost immediately see a sign proclaiming “Nation’s most military friendly state” – a sign paid for, in part, by the N.C. Bankers Association. In high schools, military recruiters “insinuate themselves into school life at every level.” Loudspeakers at sports events sound out tributes to veterans and active-duty troops. The latter may receive free tickets to performances, preferential parking, and discounts on merchandise.

Unveiling of the new “Welcome to North Carolina” sign for interstate highways in the state – Fayetteville Observer

Author Joan Roelofs has written a new and much needed book that explains much about praise and support for the U.S. military. The Trillion Dollar Silencer, provides atravelogue of sorts through the U.S. military-industrial complex. It moves from the military establishment and big corporations to colleges, universities, NGOs, philanthropies, foundations research institutes, and other kinds of defense contractors.

Her thesis is that dependency on the part of civilian institutions involved with the military establishment has the effect of shielding the military from widespread popular outrage at war-making and big spending. She asks, “Why is there so much acceptance of and so little protest against our government’s illegal and immoral wars and other military operations?”

The author shows her anti-war perspective in rejecting NATO and in criticizing U.S. military interventions, subversion, and covert military actions as violations of international law. She condemns U.S war-makers’ use of Cold War and anti-terrorism pretexts to have free rein to maim and destroy.

Roelofs, a retired professor of political science, is the author also of Foundations and Public Policy: The Mask of Pluralism (SUNY Press) and Greening Cities (Rowman and Littlefield).

She argues that the incentive for civilian institutions and private companies to support military funding and U.S. military purpose lies in their interests being satisfied. Propaganda, distractions, and fear of repression, she points out, are other persuaders. Her new book is about “the interests created by [the] military’s penetration into so many aspects of civilian life.”

Roelofs writes about large and small defense contractors and private, public, and non-profit ones. They are colleges, universities, research foundations, healthcare organizations, and groups working on political and legal issues and the environment. They provide the military with supplies, logistics, weapons development, human services, defense against atypical threats.

She indicates that, “75% of the [Defense Department] budget is paid to contractors.” These had enough funds, she reports, to financially support dozens of think tanks and foundations. Money, we suggest, is basic to the “interests” cited by the author.

Other observers point out that U.S. companies in 2019 accounted for 57% of the arms sold by the world’s 100 top weapons manufactures. The world’s five biggest weapons manufacturers are U.S. corporations.

Lockheed Martin took in $58.2 billion in revenues in 2020 and showed profits of $9.1 billionin 2021. Raytheon Technologies reported arms sales of $36.8 billion in 2020 and profits of $5 billion in 2021. Boeing’s profits in 2021 were $5.19 billion. Northrop Grumman sold arms worth $30.4 billion in 2021 with $7.0 billion in net income. General Dynamics’s arms sales totaled $25.8 billion; its 2021 profits were $3.3 billion. The average salary of the CEOs of these companies was $20,795,527, according to inequality.org.

According to the book, defense contracts provide economic rescue even for next-door operations. In 2012 an $866,000 three-year contract for making cribs for childcare centers helped to revive a children’s furniture manufacturer in the author’s hometown Keene, New Hampshire. Granite Industries of Vermont was declining until it received a contract for making up to 4000 headstones a year for Arlington National Cemetery.

Surprises turn up as to who are the big defense contractors. The for-profit health insurance company Humana is the seventh largest of all of them, according to Roelofs. Massachusetts Institute of Technology ranks in 38^th place.

Relationships are tight within the military industrial complex. Upper-level employees of universities, philanthropies, and non-government organizations and the top military brass and Defense Department officials oscillate between one sphere and the other. According to the author, Defense Department grants to philanthropies, foundations, and to environmental and civil rights groups are oriented to reforms and not so much to basic social change.

The single-issue orientation of most of the contracting philanthropies and NGOs fits with military and official preferences; their fear would be that different issues seen as connected might encourage critical thinking and even dissent. Roelofs looks at the role of state and local government entities in reaching out to youth to serve military needs such as ROTC units, recruitment, and encouragement of scientific and technical educational paths.

Roelofs’ purpose has been to make “the extent and implications of the military industrial complex more visible.” But, as she notes, “many look away, and the mountain is huge to move.” Additionally, “Our political system … does not afford citizens much democratic control over policies, and hardly any over foreign policy.” The question is: “What can be done.”

Roelofs is alluding to the powerful forces attached to the economic and political status quo, among them the civilian enablers of the military establishment. She is saying, in essence, that the process of consciousness-raising that does lead to useful political action would be a long and arduous one.

Her book, which is written in a readable, accessible style, would have us start out at the beginning. The first item on the agenda is that of persuading ordinary people to say “No.” They would stand up, test the waters, be active in some way, and make a few gains.

She calls upon her readers to speak out, write to editors, contact elected officials, join and work with antiwar organizations. She advocates for a Green New Deal, a “national service program,” and “conversion to a civilian economy.” She is evidently hoping that masses of people will build a resistance movement, score some victories, gain confidence, and learn.

If Roelofs had presented all-encompassing themes like past U.S. military misadventures and the evils of a profit-driven political system, her call to action would have yielded almost nothing. Instead, more promisingly, she is lending support to a protest movement in its infancy. Now is exactly the right time for her highly recommended book.

_{W.T. Whitney Jr. is a retired pediatrician and political journalist living in Maine.}

_{Counterpunch, November 18, 2022, https://www.counterpunch.org/}

Bolivia’s socialist government confronts separatist, racist uprising / by W. T. Whitney Jr.

_{^{A banner reads ‘2023 census now!’ at a blockade on a Santa Cruz street. | via Twitter}}

With the exception of a coup-government interregnum in 2019-2021, the Movement Toward Socialism political party (MAS) has headed Bolivia’s government since the beginning of Evo Morales’s presidency in 2006.

The MAS government now led by President Luis Arce and Vice President David Choquehuanca announced on July 12 that its every-ten-year Population and Housing Census would be moved from November 16, 2022, to sometime in 2024.

Spokespersons attributed the change to difficulties left over from the pandemic, a need for translations into indigenous languages, uncertain financial resources, and extra time required for “technical” changes.

Leaders of the Santa Cruz department in Bolivia’s eastern lowlands, the nation’s largest, immediately demanded a census in 2023, not in 2024. Department governor Luis Camacho and Rómulo Calvo, president of the Santa Cruz Civic Committee, warned that without a settlement on the census, they would initiate a strike aimed at undoing the department’s economy, and thereby the national economy.

In response, “over one million Bolivians mobilized” on Aug. 25 in support of the government and against a regional leadership group that is the vanguard of opposition to Bolivia’s socialist and indigenous-led government. Even so, the strike began on Oct. 22. Recent Bolivian history suggests another coup may be in the offing.

Why a seemingly routine piece of government business like staging a census might provoke momentous consequences is not obvious. A look at expectations attached to Bolivia’s census and at the nature of Santa Cruz politics may clarify.

Census results help to determine the national distribution of government-provided services and resources and are the basis for each department’s representation in the national Legislative Assembly. Opposition forces in Santa Cruz see operation of the national census, as presently constituted, as beneficial to their side, particularly for the national elections of 2025.

They see advantage in the increased numbers of indigenous peoples migrating recently from Bolivia’s poverty-stricken highlands to economically-resourced Santa Cruz. That advantage rests on indigenous peoples showing up on the census with an identity other than indigenous.

The national census in 2012 fueled controversy when it showed that many indigenous people identify themselves as mestizo and not as belonging to a particular indigenous nation. That was encouraging to the reactionary and racist Santa Cruz leaders, who have no enthusiasm for increased indigenous representation in the national legislative assembly.

The Arce government, by contrast, objects to an undercount of indigenous people and especially in the eastern lowland departments, where their numbers are increasing.

The category of mestizo did not appear in the census of 2012 and is not part of the census in dispute now. The Santa Cruz leaders are insisting that that mestizo identity be incorporated into the census. Expert advice was sought in 2012 and the Arce government is now proposing the same.

The peculiarities of Santa Cruz are central to this story. For one thing, Bolivia’s four easternmost departments, particularly Santa Cruz, produce most of Bolivia’s wealth. Santa Cruz is home to industrial-scale agricultural operations and to facilities for oil and natural gas production. This lowland region accounts for most of Bolivia’s export income.

The realities are these: Santa Cruz alone accounts for 76% of the country’s food production, for all of its sorghum and sunflower oil production, 99% of its soy products, 92% of its sugar cane, 75% of its wheat, 72% of its rice, and 66% of its corn. In 2021, farmers owned 4.6 million head of cattle, over a million pigs, and 130 million chickens.

Among departments, Santa Cruz consumes 39% of the country’s diesel fuel and contains the bulk of Bolivia’s natural gas reserves, which rate as South America’s second largest. The Financial Times lauds the Santa Cruz economy’s explosive growth and large foreign investments. It mentions Santa Cruz city as one of the world’s fastest growing urban areas.

Also relevant to the strike story is the reactionary and racist nature of opposition leaders in Santa Cruz. They are utilizing the department’s “Civic Committee” to organize the strike and the Union of Santa Cruz Youth to carry out violent, paramilitary-style street actions. Gov. Luis Camacho formerly headed the Santa Cruz Civic Committee.

The civic committees of all departments originated decades ago in response to national-regional tensions. Members of formerly eastern European families, some of them big landowners, belong to the Santa Cruz civic committee. Many brought fascist ideology with them when they immigrated to Bolivia after World War II.

At the last of three big gatherings in Santa Cruz, Camacho on Sept. 30 announced the start on Oct. 22 of an anti-government strike of “indefinite” duration. In operation, the strike has led to barriers being placed across major highways to impede exports and in-country deliveries of commodities, mainly food. Strike leaders have forced key factories and commercial centers to shut down.

The Youth Union and other thugs have carried out anti-government demonstrations and fought in the streets against MAS party supporters and the national police. There have been injuries, human rights violations, and one death. The strike has had little impact in the other eastern departments.

With a presence at border crossings, the strikers have sharply reduced the transit of exported goods. Government authorities on Oct. 27, anticipating domestic food shortages, banned all exports from Santa Cruz of soy products, beef, sugar, and vegetable oil.

The government and MAS activists organized a rally and march by hundreds of thousands of people before the strike began, and another on the day after. In La Paz on Oct. 26, confrontation between government supporters and an opposition march left 20 persons wounded.

The government on Oct. 25 held a “Pluri-national Encuentro for a Census with Consensus.” Officials from throughout the country attended. A proposal emerged that would enable a technical commission to determine a date for the national census.

Camacho rejected it, but opposition leaders Rómulo Calvo and Vicente Cuellar accepted the proposal. In an interview, Camacho asserted that federalism remains the only solution to the “fissure” present since the “founding of the Republic.”

On Nov. 1, President Arce, referring to threats to “national integrity,” called upon military leaders “to guarantee and defend the independence, unity, and integrity of our territory.” A presidential spokesperson indicated that Arce favored new negotiations with no established date for the census and without conditions.

Events in Santa Cruz align with a grim history. President Evo Morales’s accession to power in 2006 was a culmination of old indigenous resistance against European colonialists and of recent pushback against neoliberal assaults inflicted by local enablers of U.S. and European ruling-class objectives.

Social gains achieved by the MAS-led government and its program of modest wealth distribution seemed to cement its place in history and certainly inflamed the animosities of reactionaries in Santa Cruz and nationally.

As a new constitution was being shaped—it was approved in 2009—Santa Cruz and its neighboring eastern departments staged a separatist revolt fueled by racism. A failed assassination plot against Morales in 2008 was part of it. During this period, the Morales government expelled a U.S. ambassador and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency.

The U.S. government and the Organization of American States, serving the United States, facilitated the coup that removed the Morales government in 2019 after his election to a fourth term. Luis Camacho of Santa Cruz led the coup and reportedly delivered the U.S. moneys used in various payoffs. Bolivia’s military participated.

The president of the coup government, Jeanine Áñez, is now in prison, in part because of human rights abuses and killings by soldiers during her tenure.

The current MAS-led government came into existence in 2020 following the first-round electoral victory of Arce and Choquehuanca. Its approval rating currently is 51%. The present strike has set back governmental efforts to restore a national economy devastated by the coup government’s neoliberal reforms and by pandemic effects.

Arce, reporting to the Legislative Assembly on Nov. 8, indicated that “We have complete certainty that our people are fully behind us and that they recognize a national patriotic government that looks out for the national welfare, which stands above sectarian and regional interests.” He observed that “in times of crisis, it’s always the poor that end up losing more, or losing everything.”

_{W.T. Whitney Jr. is a political journalist whose focus is on Latin America, health care, and anti-racism. A Cuba solidarity activist, he formerly worked as a pediatrician, lives in rural Maine. W.T. Whitney Jr. es un periodista político cuyo enfoque está en América Latina, la atención médica y el antirracismo. Activista solidario con Cuba, anteriormente trabajó como pediatra, vive en la zona rural de Maine.}

_{People’s World, November 10, 2022, https://peoplesworld.org/}

UN Condemns US Blockade as Crisis Builds in Cuba / by W. T. Whitney Jr

_{^{Cuba thanks universal support against the US blockade | Image: Prensa Latina}}

A long-running show played out in the United Nations General Assembly once more on November 3 as nations of the world for the thirtieth year voted overwhelming to approve a Cuban resolution calling for an end to the U.S. economic blockade of Cuba. The vote was 185 nations favoring the resolution, two nations opposing (The United States and Israel, as usual), and Ukraine and Brazil abstaining.

Cuba has withstood the blockade for 60 years, so long as to equal one fourth of the years of U.S. national existence. In that time, Cuba has lacked the resources and powerful allies that might have forced the U.S. government to backtrack.

Cuba instead has had to rely on ideals, high principles, and widespread consensus in its favor, epitomized by the yearly votes in the General Assembly The blockade is cruel, immoral, unfair, and illegal the under international law. Even so, an opportunistic and powerful U.S. ruling class has not budged.

The U.S. blockade will not end soon inasmuch as U.S. law assigns that task to the Congress. Another way for the blockade to go is for outcomes envisioned by U.S. State Department official Lester Mallory in April 1960 to have worked their way. The U.S. government, through the blockade, was seeking “economic dissatisfaction and hardship,” “hunger,” “desperation,” and “overthrow of government.”

Except for the last one, these policy goals are far advanced in being realized and a crisis may be at hand in Cuba.

Disruption

At a press conference on October 19, Cuban foreign minister Bruno Rodriguez explained how the workings of the blockade led to those results. He noted that Cuba had suffered the loss between August 2021 and February 2022 of $3.8 billion, which “is a historical record for such a short time.” Losses over six decades amount to $154 billion. With inflation, that’s $1.391 trillion.

The U.S. government designates Cuba as a terrorist-sponsoring nation. That means foreign companies and financial institutions face severe U. S. penalties if they handle dollars in transactions with Cuba. Dollars are the principal currency used in international monetary transactions. As a result, Cuba’s income from exports is reduced and international loans are largely unavailable.

Without much money to pay for imports, Cuba experiences shortages of food, spare parts, raw materials for drug manufacture, and all kinds of supplies and equipment. Rodriguez mentioned long lines and “anxiety among the population.” The blockade affects “every Cuban family” and the government cannot “guarantee medicines that an ill person requires.”

“Cuba can in no way … buy technologies, equipment, spare parts, digital technologies or software containing more than 10 per cent US components.” The blockade has aggravated difficulties caused by “international crises,” inflation, and lingering effects of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Blockade restrictions “gravely hinder our fuel purchases by making them … [up to] 50 percent more expensive.” Electrical power generation “is going through an extremely serious situation” because of unavailable replacement parts. Blackouts bedevil Cubans every day and restoration of electrical power in hurricane-damaged Pinar del Rio has been slow.

First hand report

Richard Grassl, friend and political colleague, visited Cuba recently with his wife, who is Cuban. He recalls conversations touching on shortages, distress, and uncertainty as to who is to blame.

10/16 Talked to first cousin of wife … He told me I will learn the real Cuba this time. He says not to believe what the Cuban government says about the US blockade. There are many lies. My wife’s nephew says the economy is “nothing. Many Cubans think the blockade [itself] is secondary to issues of daily living like [shortages of] food, medicine, water and lack of opportunity because there is no money.

10/17 I asked him from where most food for Cubans comes from and about food imports. He said most food comes from Miami. [President] Diaz-Canel gets some blame for the situation.

10/18 There is not much social distancing as the times are urgent. Food, consumer goods, fuel, construction materials are very expensive. Eggs are $8USD / dozen. The exchange rate is 80 CUP / USD which is 4x higher than before Covid-19. No one talks about the blockade. The problem is scarcity of money.

10/19 I talked with a friend. He says the US has so much and we have so little. He asks why cannot there be trade? … At several bodegas and public markets, many people, perhaps hundreds, waited all day for cooking oil, rice, beans, chicken etc. at prices subsidized by government.

10/20 I talked to another cousin from Matanzas who said the economy is “on the floor”. It is very hard with little money. A round trip from Matanzas to Havana (500 km) was $500 CUP/person one way or $2000 round trip for both persons by bus.

Corruption and blockade

Former Cuban President Fidel Castro delivered wide-ranging speech on November 17, 2005 notable for his highlighting of corruption: “This country can self-destruct; this Revolution can destroy itself, but they can never destroy us; we can destroy ourselves, and it would be our fault.”

Similarly, President Miguel Díaz-Canel on October 26 convoked a meeting of Cuba’s Council of Ministers at which a plan was unveiled with “more than 40 directives aimed at confronting crime, corruption, and lack of social discipline.” The report appearing on the presidential website characterized the President’s remarks as “a forthright analysis of illegalities, stealing and price-gouging imposed on a population with no economic means.”

Both earlier and now, the toxic mixture of shortages of goods and money has led to stealing and lawlessness. The progression suggests that shortages of both are sufficient to exert a destabilizing effect on society. That evolution of blockade effects, which have reached crisis proportions, is consistent with how the blockade was supposed to operate.

President Díaz-Canel explained to the Council that, “neither the Party or the government can remain on the sidelines of what’s happening in society.” Therefore, “we must not allow those who neither work nor contribute, and are beyond the law, to acquire more and have more possibilities for life than do those who actually contribute. We have it backwards now and are breaking with the ideas of socialism.”

He pointed out that, “Many of these things are the result of us not attending to the powers and responsibilities assigned to our institutions.” [Corrupt activities] “take place in full view of the Party centers, the administrative institutions, and leadership bodies.”

The President asserted that anyone able to work who is not doing so is not so vulnerable as to require “welfare assistance.” In fact, “the building of socialism does not depend upon a welfare system. What we have to seek out, instead, is social transformation.”

Díaz-Canel observed that, “We don’t do away with taxes here so that the rich get richer and poorer people have less. Here, we do have taxes so that those who have more give something up so that those who have less are better off.” “That’s socialism,” he explained.

While celebrating another Cuban victory in the UN General Assembly, supporters of revolutionary Cuba, we think, ought to recognize that

the survival of Cuba’s government is now at unprecedented risk, thanks to the U.S. blockade. U.S. supporters of Cuba’s revolutionary project would do well to elevate actions of resistance against their own government to a new level, with new intensity. That’s because realities in Cuba appear to have altered, ominously so.

Already new mobilization may be underway. In the days prior to the General Assembly’s vote on November 3, dozens of rallies for ending the blockade took place in cities and towns throughout the United States (two of them in Maine, the author’s home state), with particularly big ones in Los Angeles, Portland Oregon; and New York. There, an impressive march took place between Times Square and the United Nations Plaza.