Never forget the police terror of the Trump years / by Taryn Fivek

_{^{Tear gas and dust fill the air as protesters gather on Interstate 676 in Philadelphia, June 1, 2020 during a march calling for justice over the death of George Floyd. | Matt Rourke / AP}}

_{Reposted from Peoples World}

In the final year of Trump’s first term as president, Linda Tirado was shot in the face with a 40mm “less-lethal” projectile by police in Minneapolis while covering the George Floyd uprisings as a citizen photojournalist. Her left eye was removed, partially blinding her, and she suffered a traumatic brain injury that has now, four years after her injury, led her to palliative hospice. A lesbian and single mother, she is now one of the hundreds of thousands of Americans soliciting donations to cover her medical expenses.

Tirado was one of the hundreds of people who were severely injured during the George Floyd uprisings, and will eventually become one of the dozens of people who were killed during this time. Years later, cities across the U.S. paid out at least $80 million in settlements to protesters.

**_{^{It started before Trump: Heavily-armed police in Baton Rouge, La., at a protest following the killing of Alton Sterling in 2016.}}**
**_{^{Taryn Fivek / People’s World}}**

The fascistic violence of 2020 was a fitting bookend for a presidency that began with mass protests against the inauguration, police brutality unprecedented in modern times, and the white supremacist rallies and murder of Heather Heyer in Charlottesville, Va.

This is not to say that protests of the pre-Trump era were allowed to peacefully assemble; nor has that been true for those of the post-Trump period. For proof of that, we need only look at the recent arrests of student encampment protesters pushing for an end to the genocide in Gaza across the United States or the terror wrought by racists against Palestinians and people of Arab descent lately.

The history of the United States has been written by a plethora of mass movements propelling working-class people into the streets—from May Day to the Civil Rights Movement to anti-war protests opposing one U.S. imperialist misadventure after another. Often, but not always, these mass movements result in progressive action taken at the ballot box.

It was a cynical ploy for Joe Biden’s presidential campaign to claim that the protests in Charlottesville were what inspired him to run, but his campaign knew they were speaking to a tried-and-true electoral tactic by having him do so. The election of his predecessor, Barack Obama, though governing during a period that saw gruesome police violence at Standing Rock and against Black Lives Matter protesters, was itself, at least in part, a response to the eight years of George W. Bush’s “War on Terror,” which also saw unprecedented attack on civil rights across the board at home while waging war abroad.

When the news broke that Biden won the 2020 elections, residents of New York leaned out of their windows to bang pots and pans together in celebration. Was it because they were so confident that the oldest man ever elected president, a man who has held elected office for more than 20% of the history of the United States, would oversee an administration driven by progressive change and renewal? Or was it because they felt the boot lift off their necks?

_{^{Callum Wilson took this selfie while trying to clear his eyes of the tear gas fired by police on June 1, 2020. A short time later, he discovered he had been hit directly in the chest by a rubber bullet fired by police. | Photo via Callum Wilson}}

People’s World interviewed Callum Wilson, Communist Party district committee member for Eastern Pennsylvania and Delaware. His answer to that question echoes many others who sacrificed much to bring Trump down in 2020: “Biden’s victory was, among many things, a referendum on Trump and his crackdown on the movements. Trump lost decisively.”

Wilson is one of the many thousands brutalized by police violence during the 2020 Black Lives Matter uprisings across the country. On June 1, 2020, Wilson and his brother were among the activists who shut down I-676 in Philadelphia to demand justice for George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.

“My brother and I were in the front lines as we entered the overpass,” he recalled. “There, roughly a few hundred feet ahead of us, two black SUVs labeled ‘State Police’ arrived. The crowd stopped; suddenly there was a mad rush.”

His memory of what happened next is still sharp.

Officers, clad in black and wielding rifles, “began to shoot rubber bullets as I heard several cracks of fire before everyone began to run. No warning was given, no resistance offered.” Wilson said everyone “was either running or standing their ground with hands up shouting: ‘Don’t shoot!’”

It was only a few moments later that Wilson discovered he had taken a rubber bullet directly to the chest. Because of the fear and the rush of adrenaline, he did not notice right away.

“By then, officers began to fire tear gas after the crowd as we ran away. Behind me, officers who mounted the divider were spraying mace into the crowd. I was separated from my brother and called out his name as more screams and the cracks of fire erupted around me.”

After several agonizing moments, he finally found his brother and together they made a rush, along with the rest of the crowd, to climb the hill they’d come down on in order to enter the highway.

“As we began to climb, more tear gas was fired on us. I could not breathe. I was choking, and I felt my throat closing. I lost my brother again. However, a man helped me up. I passed a struggling woman and helped her up. The three of us attempted to make it up the hill and over the high fence.”

They failed. The stampede of people had churned the gravel beneath their feet, and the air was now filled with rock dust as well as tear gas, “which again, despite us fleeing for our lives, was still coming.” Wilson ran back down the hill toward the highway. “Believing I was going to die, I ran for my life, away from the fence and back down the street.”

As for Wilson’s brother, he was discovered later that his arm was broken, busted by a steel gas canister that police fired at him. “Every day, I am thankful that it did not hit his head,” Wilson recalled. “I could not bear losing my best friend in life. My brother and I were far from the worst injured, but there are other wounds that do not show on flesh and linger on in the mind.”

**_{^{Police in Philadelphia conduct mass arrests of Black Lives Matter demonstrators on I-676, on June 1, 2020. | AP}}**

Wilson and his brother were two of the more than 300 people who eventually received remuneration from the City of Philadelphia for the injuries caused by police that day. The money wasn’t much, though.

“My settlement barely covered a year of my student loans,” Callum pointed out. “I did a lot of begging to get loan pauses, as I could not defer. The indignity of the city of my birth brutalizing me is hard to stomach even now, because being from Philadelphia fills me with pride. But we had an amazing legal team, and the fact that we won anything at all was something. This is something not everyone was able to enjoy outside of Philadelphia.”

Most of the people who were on the receiving end of police violence during the Trump years have never received any kind of financial compensation for their injuries and the impacts on their lives. Community-organized assistance efforts, like crowdfunding through organizations such as the Democratic Socialists of America and other groups in response to the violence in Charlottesville, for instance, have tried to fill the gaps for some. (Disclosure: The author was a beneficiary of this fund in 2017.)

Yet, even settlement and donated money can come up short, as Linda Tirado, now dying in hospice, knows all too well. Her settlement of $600,000, 20% of which she donated to social causes in Minneapolis, doesn’t come close to covering the costs of her medical care, nor can it assure a financially secure future for her daughter.

More action is needed to recognize the veterans of these social movements, starting with universal health care and a social safety net that isn’t shredded by decades of neoliberal austerity. Yet, achieving this will take a long-term strategic outlook on building working-class power, something that many activists worry is missing nowadays.

**_{^{Photo taken in Charlottesville, Va., during the 2017 white supremacist ‘Unite the Right’ rally. | Taryn Fivek / People’s World}}**

“I think people tend to have a short memory,” Wilson admitted. “I think many have forgotten that Trump wanted to crack skulls and shoot people down,” he said. “I think many have forgotten the special agents who grabbed people in the night, I think people have forgotten Kyle Rittenhouse and the gangs of fascist thugs who took the law into their own hands to murder, assault, and terrorize freedom-loving Americans exercising their rights, and I think too many have forgotten the ultimate sacrifice that anti-fascists heroes like Heather Heyer made in the fight against reaction.”

Wilson is firm on his perspective. “To forget these things, is, in my view, paramount to treason in the anti-fascist and anti-racist freedom struggle. It dishonors our sacrifices and more importantly, makes us weak against the fascist threat.”

_{Taryn Fivek is a reporter for People’s World in New York.}

45 burned alive by Israel, Biden still unsure whether ‘red line’ is crossed / by C.J. Atkins

_{^{Amid still smouldering rubble on Monday, Palestinians in Rafah search for the remains of loved ones burned alive after an Israeli airstrike engulfed a tent encampment of refugees in flames Sunday night. | Jahad Alshrafi / AP}}

_{Reposted from Peoples World}

At least 45 Palestinians were burned alive in Rafah Sunday after bombs dropped from Israeli jets turned a tent encampment into a blazing inferno. On social media—and on television, at least outside the United States and Israel—videos circulating show Gazans carrying the charred remains of victims from the blackened rubble.

One woman interviewed by the international media Monday as she and others scoured the ashes for the bodies of the dead described the situation: “All the people fled from the tents running. The sound was horrifying and deafening. This place is full of innocent people and children, and they are all martyred.”

Another man, searching for his loved ones’ remains, said, “My entire family were wiped off the record. No one is left.”

**_{^{The tent encampment burns in Rafah Sunday night after an Israeli airstrike. AP}}**

It’s a story that has been repeated thousands of times during the last several months. Along with the Palestinians killed in other Israeli attacks this weekend and into Monday, the human beings incinerated in Rafah pushed the Gaza death toll to just over 36,000.

In Washington, meanwhile, the White House says it is “assessing” whether this latest atrocity crosses the “red line” that Biden announced in early May. With that warning, Biden had threatened to suspend delivery of some classes of U.S.-made weapons to Israel if it attacked Rafah, where more than a million Palestinians have been herded by Israeli troops.

On May 8, Biden did issue a “pause” on a single shipment of 1,800 of the 2,000-pound bombs and 1,700 of the 500-pound bombs that Israel used to flatten Gaza and kill tens of thousands in the earlier months of the war. He announced that if Israel went into Rafah, “I’m not supplying the weapons that have been used historically.”

Despite that declaration, Israel’s troops have been attacking Rafah for weeks, and its bombers have been carrying out airstrikes regularly—with essentially no consequences. Aside from the two categories of bombs, all other scheduled weapons shipments have continued unabated. Even as this article goes to press, it is being reported that Israeli tanks are rolling through the center of Rafah.

Before making any moves in response to Sunday’s mass murder, the Biden administration is apparently awaiting the results of an inquiry by the Israeli Defense Forces, which has been tasked with investigating its own crimes. Washington is also clinging to the claim by Netanyahu that the burning of 45 people was a “tragic mishap” resulting from an effort to use “precision munitions” to target Hamas fighters.

Using language that’s become all too familiar, a White House official said Monday that the images coming from Rafah were “devastating” and “heartbreaking.” There was no signal at all, however, that the president has any intention of changing his approach to the war. In the next breath, the same spokesperson said, “Israel has a right to go after Hamas.”

Now held prisoner by Biden’s own red line declaration, the administration and its PR spin doctors continue to engage in a game of words, contorting to explain away each new atrocity committed by Israel as not yet sufficiently horrible enough to justify cutting off Israel’s endless U.S. arms supply.

When Israel attacked Gaza earlier this month, for instance, it was deemed “not a major military operation.” Therefore, it did not qualify as crossing the red line and thus failed to trigger any further weapons pauses.

Then, when a pre-scheduled State Department statement on how Israel was using the weapons supplied by the U.S. had to be issued in mid-May, it reported that it “may be reasonable to assess” Israel has violated international law. But despite the supposed reasonableness, the Biden administration declined to make such an assessment.

Several days ago, even as Israel maintained its total blockade on food, water, fuel, and medical supplies crossing any of Gaza’s borders, the existence of a (now disabled) floating platform letting a handful of ships unload a miniscule amount of supplies was deemed sufficient for the U.S. to conclude Israel was not “prohibiting or otherwise restricting the transport or delivery of…humanitarian assistance.”

To top it all off, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan spent the last several days huddling with Israeli leaders in Tel Aviv to strategize a way that Israel might ravage Rafah in a way that would supposedly “prevent mass civilian casualties.” And that brings us to now.

**_{^{Palestinians mourn relatives burned alive in Israel’s bombardment of Rafah on Sunday night. | Jehad Alshrafi / AP}}**

Will the White House decide that the 45 Palestinians burned alive Sunday night constitute mass civilian casualties? Given what has been seen so far, there’s little reason to hope.

The level of verbal obfuscation by the administration when it comes to Israel’s war crimes, along with Sullivan’s active collaboration in the scheme to attack Rafah in a manner meeting some politically acceptable standard, suggest Biden’s “red line” was never real.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez put the issue squarely Monday: “It is long past time for the president to live up to his word and suspend military aid.” Rep. Ayanna Pressley asked, “How much longer will the U.S. stand by while the Israeli military slaughters and mutilates Palestinian babies?”

Rep. Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian-American in Congress, called Netanyahu a “genocidal maniac.” And as always, Rep. Cori Bush didn’t mince words: “Babies burned alive. Palestinians massacred overnight. End the genocide. Ceasefire now.”

But what will it take to make Biden change course? How many more war crimes must be committed before he orders a real halt in arms shipments? In the wake of the Rafah blaze, will he keep repeating the obvious falsehood that “what’s happening in Gaza is not genocide,” as he did last week?

The longer the president sticks to his disastrous approach, isolating increasing an number of voters, the greater becomes the risk of U.S. politics shifting even further to the right in November. The return of Trump would likely mean even more death and destruction for Palestine, along with creeping fascism here at home.

Only 34% of U.S. voters say they approve of Biden’s handling of the war. As one Reuters pollster put it, “This issue is a stone-cold loser for Biden; he’s losing votes from the left, right, and center.” Among Democrats, young people, voters of color, and others, the numbers are even worse.

The university encampments must remain steadfast. The ceasefire resolutions from labor unions, city councils, and other bodies have to continue piling up. Protests, petitions, and phone calls to the White House are needed in even greater numbers.

What other tactics can be employed, though? How can the political influence of the weapons makers, Netanyahu’s right-wing U.S. allies, and the neocon foreign policy establishment be combatted?

These are questions that the evolving ceasefire movement must collectively tackle. The survival of Gaza and U.S. democracy are on the line.

_{C.J. Atkins is the managing editor at People’s World. He holds a Ph.D. in political science from York University in Toronto and has a research and teaching background in political economy and the politics and ideas of the American left.}

Right-wing censors target African-American studies during Black History Month / by Svante Myrick

_{^{Books and literature of poet Langston Hughes are seen at the African American Heritage Museum of Southern New Jersey in Newtonville, N.J. If right-wing book banners have their way, many of these titles will be unavailable to young people across the country. | Charles J. Olson / The Daily Journal}}

_{Reposted from the People’s World}

A little over a year ago, the College Board unveiled its long-awaited draft Advanced Placement African American Studies curriculum for high school students around the country. What happened next was sad—and all too predictable.

Florida officials, led by Gov. Ron DeSantis, howled. They claimed the course “lacks educational value” and violated state laws against teaching about race and racism. The College Board initially caved to Florida’s demands and said the course would be heavily redacted, then said it wouldn’t.

At the end of 2023, it released the final version of the course, and it’s…better. But it’s still missing some important concepts. The new course omits any discussion of “structural racism” and makes studying the Black Lives Matter movement—modern Black history by any measure—optional.

That pretty much sums up the state of the fight against censorship and book-banning in this Black History Month: better, but still problematic.

On the plus side, the last few months have brought some very good news.

School board candidates endorsed by the pro-censorship group Moms for Liberty went down to resounding defeats last fall. After Illinois became the first state to prohibit book bans, several states—including Colorado, Kansas, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, Washington, and Virginia—introduced their own anti-ban bills.

In December, two Black lawmakers, Reps. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., and Maxwell Frost, D-Fla., introduced bills in Congress aimed at fighting book bans. And a federal judge ruled that parts of an Iowa book ban were unenforceable.

But the censorship movement isn’t going away.

Moms for Liberty plans to start its own charter school in South Carolina. In other words, if you won’t let them ban books in your school, they’ll just start their own school— with your taxpayer money.

Meanwhile, librarians nationwide are being targeted by threats and harassment. And the propaganda outfit PragerU continues to pump out the offensive, woefully inaccurate junk it calls “edutainment” for public schools that will buy it.

So, there’s still work to do.

Fortunately, the public is overwhelmingly on the right side of this issue. Poll after poll shows that Americans don’t support censorship and book bans in schools. Those of us who want children to have the freedom to learn are the majority.

We understand that kids are better prepared for life—and our country is better prepared to compete globally—when education is historically accurate and reflective of the diversity of our culture. We understand that book banning is un-American and censorship is a tool of dictators.

This majority needs to mobilize and be heard at the ballot box. The defeat of pro-censorship school board candidates in 2023 was a great start. Now we have to take that momentum into the local, state, and national elections this fall.

In the meantime, we also know that public pressure works. A public outcry got the College Board to change its plans for the African American Studies course. And when publisher Scholastic said it would segregate books about the Black and LGBTQ communities at its school book fairs, the public was outraged—and Scholastic reversed course.

Together, we have the power to stop the censors who want to whitewash our history and deprive kids of facts and stories that help them to understand our world. That applies to the Black experience in America, but also the experiences of LGBTQ people, Indigenous peoples, people of diverse faiths, immigrants, people with disabilities, and more.

Civil rights activists have pushed for decades for book publishers and educators to acknowledge and teach our full history, and to awaken our consciousness as a nation. We refuse to go backwards.

Black History Month is a great time for us to commit to using the power that we have to protect the freedom to learn. Our kids, and our country, will be better for it.

_{^{Institute for Policy Studies / OtherWords}}

_{Svante Myrick serves as President and CEO of People for the American Way. Myrick garnered national media attention as the youngest-ever mayor of Ithaca, New York.}

We need public transit everywhere, not just big cities / by Leeann Hall

_{^{A caregiver helps a person get out of a van. | Getty Images}}

_{Reposted from the Maine Beacon}

All Americans should be able to get to their jobs, schools, and places of worship easily. It should be affordable and convenient for all of us to visit friends and family.

But many people in this country simply don’t enjoy that mobility — especially Mainers, who experience one of the lowest qualities of transit access. Maybe they don’t have a car. Maybe they can’t drive. Maybe the bus only comes once an hour. Or maybe there’s no bus service at all.

Better public transit is key — and not just in cities. Transit might look different in smaller towns and rural areas than in big cities, but it’s no less of a lifeline.

Over a million Americans in small and rural communities don’t have access to a car or the ability to operate one. A third of households only have one car. These people are left struggling to access jobs, services, and community life. This results in barriers to recreation, employment, medical care, and basic services for those most isolated from society — like senior citizens, children, young adults, and veterans.

But for far too long, policymakers in Washington have prioritized highways and cars over public transit. This has devastating impacts on transit, especially in the smaller towns and rural areas that need it.

A new piece of legislation introduced by Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA) would change that. The “Stronger Communities Through Better Transit Act” would provide high-quality transit to communities across the country.

This vital piece of legislation would create a new formula grant program available to all transit agencies to increase service frequency and dependability. That means additional hours of service so people don’t have to wait so long for the bus, or so folks who don’t work white-collar hours can still get to their jobs. It would mean new, frequent service to underserved communities.

There’s nothing strange about this idea. For decades, the federal government has supported the cost of operating aviation through air traffic control and the cost of shipping through investments in ports and the management of locks and dams in the inland waterways.

These are essential services for the movement of goods and people. Operating high-quality transit is just as essential to get people to employment and to give businesses access to talent and customers. And it is time for Washington to treat it as such.

While Congress has taken vital steps in recent years to fund transit, including passing the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the lack of congressional action on operations funding has led to critical funding shortfalls at numerous transit agencies. This new legislation, and similar legislation offered by Senator Tina Smith (D-MN) in the last Congress, would help fix that for our communities.

Tens of millions of people in the U.S. — from small rural towns to major urban centers — rely on public transit to get to work every day, generating trillions of dollars in economic activity. Every dollar invested in transit offers a 5-to-1 return — and every $1 billion invested in public transit produces 50,000 jobs. Transit agencies are often among the largest employers in their cities.

We need to invest in transit everywhere, not just in big cities. Because an investment in transit is an investment in our community and our people.

And it is an investment we need Washington to make.

_{^{This column was first published by OtherWords.org}}

_{LeeAnn Hall is the director of the National Campaign for Transit Justice.}

Honor Bound to Defend Freedom? The Ongoing Shame of Guantanamo / by Jon Krampner and Robert Corsini

_{^{2023 Close Guantanamo Protest via LA Progressive}}

“Close Guantanamo Now!”

_{Reposted from the LA Progressive}

The 1967 film “To Sir, With Love” is the story of a teacher, played by Sidney Poitier, who gets a job in a high school in a rough, working-class British neighborhood. The assignment is regarded as thankless and even dangerous, but he eventually wins the trust and affection of his prematurely hardened students. The film’s theme song, which became a pop hit, speaks of “a man who taught me right from wrong and weak from strong, that’s a lot to learn.”

The difference between weak and strong would seem so self-evident as to render the need to learn it unnecessary. But is it?

As the United States reeled from the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the administration of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney took a series of steps designed to show the U.S. and the world its strength and resolve. Almost all of those steps—among them the illegal and unprovoked war of aggression against Iraq, the 20-year morass of the war in Afghanistan, huge tax cuts for the wealthy who did not need them, and the functional elimination of Fourth Amendment protections against illegal search and seizure—have proven to be unwise, corrosive of America’s Constitutional order at home and of its standing in the world. They have shown weakness, not strength.

And so it has proven with the Guantanamo Bay detention center, another Bush-Cheney gift to the American people and the world. Opened on January 11, 2002, it was designed to show the strength of America under attack. But it has proven instead to be yet another case where the United States traded its Constitutional birthright for a mess of Bush-Cheney pottage. Sadly, it has been kept open by presidential administrations of both parties and by Congress ever since, showing that many of the worst ideas in Washington are bipartisan.

Guantanamo is emblematic of a noxious cluster of issues: kidnapping (or, as our government prefers to call it, “extraordinary rendition”), arrest without charges, imprisonment without trial, torture and murder. The practices employed by the government of the United States at Guantanamo and at CIA black sites violate the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, the UN Convention Against Torture and the U.S. Torture Statute.

The United States has held 779 men and boys, all of them Muslim, in Guantanamo. Thirty of them remain. Sixteen of these 30 have been cleared for release by that notorious sympathizer of liberal causes, the Pentagon. Some of these men have been cleared for years. But there they languish. There they rot. Our government has been able to impose its will on them. But does that show its strength? Was our government strong when it kidnapped these men? Was it strong when it arrested them without charge? When it imprisoned them without trial? When it tortured them? Was it strong when, as in the cases of Mani al-Utaybi, Yasser el-Zahrani and Ali Abdullah Ahmed, it murdered them?

I say no, as any reasonable person would. In violating U.S. and international law as well as common precepts of decency and justice, our government has shown appalling weakness. It has been too weak to grant these men their basic human rights. It has been too weak to admit that what it has done was and is wrong, dreadfully, grievously wrong.

Guantanamo is a sign of America’s weakness, but not the only one. Our government enthusiastically underwrites the Israeli genocide in the Gaza Strip. It feeds Ukraine into the wood chipper in its unnecessary and ill-advised war with Russia, a war which could have been easily and justly prevented. At home, it lets the need of the people and the infrastructure languish. It may believe these actions show strength, but they do just the opposite.

On January 11, from 12 noon to 1:30 p.m., we will gather at the Federal Building in Downtown Los Angeles to protest the ongoing injustice of Guantanamo. One Guantanamo activist has called it a boutique issue, one that most Americans and even many in the activist community can’t be bothered to protest, so accepted a part of the American landscape has it become. But here at ICUJP, we know the difference between right and wrong, so I hope as many of you as possible will join us.

Add your voices to ours, so they carry all the way to Washington, where our leaders need to stop posturing like tough guys, the way Sidney Poitier’s juvenile delinquent students did before he showed them the difference between right and wrong and weak and strong, which is a lot to learn, at least for some people. Help us give our leaders the wisdom—and the strength—to close Guantanamo.

_{Jon Krampner helps to organize the Close Guantanamo Rally for Interfaith Communities United for Justice and Peace (ICUJP)}

_{Robert Corsini Filmmaker, Producer and Writer, has worked in the entertainment industry for 30 years as a producer, writer, video editor and shooter specializing in documentary, news, and public affairs content. Most recently Robert was the lead development producer on two feature documentaries, ‘Architects of Denial’ about Armenian genocide denial, and the Emmy Award winning ‘Hate Among Us’, focusing on resurgent global anti-semitism.}

Being homeless means not being free — as Americans are supposed to be / Paul Schofield

_{^{A sign in front of Portland City Hall during the weeks-long encampment in 2020, which called for more support to address the crisis of homelessness in the city. | Beacon}}

_{Reposted from the Maine Beacon}

Homelessness is a state of deprivation. Those who are homeless need shelter to be safe; they don’t have it. They need a toilet for basic bodily functions; they don’t have one. They need a shower to keep clean; they don’t have that, either.

Because such deprivation dramatically affects the well-being of people who are homeless, public discussion of homelessness tends to focus on whether and to what extent the government should carry out anti-homelessness policy as a way of improving people’s overall quality of life.

Some philosophers have argued that while homelessness is clearly a state of deprivation, it is also a condition in which a person’s freedom is profoundly compromised.

These theorists insist a society that cherishes freedom – such as the U.S. – must implement anti-homelessness policy as a way of liberating people who lack housing.

Because the number of people experiencing homelessness continues to rise at a record rate, these academic ideas have become increasingly relevant to the real world. I am a philosopher interested in exploring the moral dimensions of homelessness, as well as shining a light on underdiscussed aspects of it. I believe that public debate would benefit greatly from increased attention to the ways homelessness limits Americans’ freedom.

Freedom to be somewhere

Since homelessness is usually discussed in terms of deprivation, the claim that homelessness has much to do with freedom can seem surprising.

Freedom is commonly understood as the ability to do what one chooses without being interfered with. My freedom is limited if you lock me in a cell or place a boulder on the street I want to drive down.

Homelessness, on the other hand, seems at first glance like a condition in which a person is mostly able to do as they choose, albeit without important resources that would make their life better.

The philosopher and legal theorist Jeremy Waldron sees things differently. Waldron says that private property often serves to interfere with people’s choices. If a person wants to walk in New York City from midtown Manhattan to Harlem, others’ property interferes with their ability to choose the most direct route. If a person wants to see a particular Andy Warhol painting, the fact that it is kept at a private residence interferes with their ability to choose to view it.

In itself, this isn’t a problem, as no one should be free to go anywhere and do anything they want. The trouble, says Waldron, comes when a person who is homeless does not have private property that they are able to occupy, free from interference. In such instances, the person will be confined to public spaces, such as sidewalks and parks.

But public spaces themselves are highly regulated through local ordinances, limiting who may use them and for what purposes.

A person who is homeless and sleeps on a public bench will often be told by the police to move. Someone who sets up a tent on a sidewalk will usually have it confiscated. Someone who urinates or defecates in a park can be arrested.

Now you can see why some think that homelessness compromises a person’s freedom. Sleeping and relieving oneself are necessary, life-sustaining tasks.

But as Waldron points out, “Everything that is done has to be done somewhere. No one is free to perform an action unless there is somewhere he is free to perform it.”

Given the way society protects private property and regulates public spaces, it seems that people who are homeless are left with no space at all in which they are free to do the things they need to do in order to live. This is about as severe an infringement on freedom as you can imagine, and Waldron’s point is that a society that loves freedom simply cannot tolerate it.

Anti-homelessness is not just about benevolence and generosity, then. It is about protecting liberty.

Freedom from others

Of course, people who are homeless do sleep and relieve themselves. So, in what sense do they actually lack the freedom to do so?

The political philosopher Christopher Essert argues that Waldron’s analysis should be taken one step further by considering its implications for interpersonal relations.

Since a person who is homeless has nowhere to freely perform life-sustaining tasks, typically they will either seek permission from someone to use their property, use the property and hope to not be noticed or, at worst, seek forgiveness. Either way, they depend upon the grace of another in order to do the things they need to do.

This puts people who are homeless at the mercy of those who have property.

Whether a homeless person has a place to sleep or whether they are arrested for sleeping somewhere without permission is completely determined by the wishes of others. Keesha might sleep on Felix’s couch for a few nights. But as soon as Felix is in a bad mood, he can throw her out. Or Felix might make access to his couch conditional upon her attending church services, supporting his preferred political candidate or performing sexual acts. What she does and does not do is now up to Felix.

Essert connects this set of observations to what is called a “republican” conception of freedom. This way of understanding freedom is less about whether a person is actually interfered with and more about the way they are placed under the arbitrary power of another.

The intuitive idea is that if someone else always has the power to determine your choices, then you aren’t free. Since a homeless person is always on property over which someone else has authority, they are always, writes Essert, “under the power of others, dependent on them, dominated by them, unfree.”

In the U.S. especially, arguments that appeal to freedom are taken very seriously. Even those who insist that it is not the government’s job to ensure everyone a good quality of life believe that it must ensure freedom. Even those whose ears close when they hear calls for charity and beneficence seem to pay attention when freedom is at stake.

By proposing this way of seeing the life of someone who is homeless, then, philosophers have raised the possibility that allowing homelessness to persist contradicts values that are, at heart, fundamentally American.

_{^{This column has been republished from The Conversation.}}

_{Paul Schofield is an associate professor of philosophy at Bates College}

Workers can fight war by refusing to transport weapons / by Ismael Parra

_{^{Photo credit: AP}}

_{Reposted from the People’s World}

I am and have been a worker all my life. I know that working people are the ones who build and transform everything in human society. Working people can also change the direction that society moves when they move in unity.

I know that politicians do the bidding of large contributors to their election campaigns. Politicians do only what will keep them in the good favor of the big campaign donors. They have to if they want to have enough money for their election campaigns, which are very expensive because there is no public campaign policy for elections to get corporate money out of politics.

I also know that if our elected officials refuse to stop the arms sales to Israel because they are beholden to private deep-pocket donors, then working people must take steps to stop the atrocities being committed against Palestinian men, women, and children using U.S. bombs and other U.S.-made weapons of war.

For example, the arms that are being paid for with our tax money and sent to Israel cannot be shipped to Israel if longshore workers do not load them onto ships. If arms are loaded elsewhere onto trains, trucks, or airplanes, workers in those industries can refuse to load them onto these modes of transportation, as well.

By refusing to load weapons headed for Israel, working people can stop the murder of innocent civilians by these weapons. Workers and their unions can refuse to be accomplices in murder and war crimes, which are punishable by law, by refusing to handle these instruments of death.

The refusal by the union of longshore workers is not new. On other occasions, they have refused to load American weapons and arms in order to add to the pressure on the government and our elected representatives to help stop the killing of innocents in conflicts in other countries

What about workers who are soldiers? Soldiers must be reminded of their humanity that training has robbed them of. They have also been numbed, in their training, to the unnecessary killing involved in following orders by their superiors. Soldiers can stop the killing of innocent civilians by refusing to participate in these types of missions.

It is possible to implement strategies to achieve military objectives other than the genocidal bombing of civilian-inhabited cities in Palestinian ancestral lands causing the outright murder of civilians as ordered by the fascist Israeli government and military leaders. Parents of soldiers, who are primarily future young workers—and the general public—must call upon their daughters and sons to question and refuse to be murderous pawns in carrying out the extermination policies being implemented against the Palestinian people in Gaza and other parts of Israel.

Israel must be pressured to stop this slaughter of civilians, nearly a third of whom are children! Our elected officials must be instrumental in such pressure to end all economic and weapons aid to Israel. Marches, demonstrations, peaceful occupation of government offices (sit-ins), and protests in the streets must also accompany and be part of this pressure. All tactics, short of violence against groups and individuals, must be used to stop the genocide being committed by Israel against the Palestinians.

Once again, the refusal to handle or transport weapons by workers and their unions must be reconsidered. It represents the ability and power we have as workers to change the direction of our societies toward the immediate establishment of peace in Palestine. Workers can stop the implementation of war by not participating in the transportation of weapons. Workers can effectively bring peace.

_{Ismael Parra is the Southern California Chair of the National Writers Union, a musician, and writer. Ismael Parra es el presidente de la Unión Nacional de Escritores del Sur de California, músico y escritor.}

Is ‘Bidenomics’ a break from neoliberalism? / by John Bachtell

_{^{President Joe Biden speaks on June 28, 2023, at the Old Post Office in Chicago. Biden has long struggled to neatly summarize his sprawling economic vision. In Chicago, he gave a speech on ‘Bidenomics’ in the hopes that the term will lodge in voters’ brains ahead of the 2024 elections. But what is Bidenomics? The White House definition is different from the Republican one—evidence that catchphrases can be double-edged. | Evan Vucci / AP}}

_{Originally published in the People’s World on August 10, 2023}

This is the first in a three-part series analyzing the set of policies dubbed “Bidenomics” by the Biden administration and the Democratic Party. In the series, author John Bachtell argues the economic initiatives of the Biden presidency are a break from the neoliberal orthodoxy that’s dominated policymaking in Washington for decades. Stay tuned for parts 2 and 3 in the coming days.

“I came to office determined to change the economic direction of this country. To get rid of “trickle-down” economics, which has failed the country for decades,” declared President Joe Biden when speaking at a solar energy manufacturing plant in Columbia, S.C., on July 6. The facility’s construction was funded by the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), legislation passed without Republican support, including Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., in whose district the event occurred.

Biden’s appearance in South Carolina capped a week of public appearances by administration officials, beginning with his June 28 speech in Chicago outlining the policy framework his supporters have dubbed “Bidenomics,” pitching it as a replacement for “Reaganomics,” or neoliberal economic policies.

As the administration rapidly implements the policies under this framework “across all of government” and society, their enormous sweep is coming into focus: a new theory of economic growth and a set of economic, legislative, and social policies geared to fundamentally break with “trickle-down” policies while instituting a national industrial policy carrying out a green energy transition and addressing massive economic and social inequality.

*_{^{Tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations were a central part of Ronald Reagan’s trickle-down neoliberal program. Here, in 1985, he holds a replica of a tax return form. | AP}}*

According to Biden administration officials, the new policies rest on three pillars: modernizing the U.S. physical infrastructure and targeting investments in U.S.-based manufacturing, science, and research and development for a green energy transition interwoven with environmental justice; empowering workers and working-class and historically marginalized communities; and increasing economic competitiveness through anti-trust enforcement and regulatory changes to reduce consumer costs and economic inequality.

The Biden administration policies are “turning out to be the most successful set of economic policies the United States has witnessed in a half-century,” according to former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich. They include the most significant investments in science, research, and development since WWII.

The IRA, American Rescue Plan (ARP), Infrastructure and Investment Jobs Act (IIJA), and CHIPs and Science Act (CHIPS) are infusing $4 trillion in massive public investments into the economy, already catalyzing some 35,000 projects. To date, federal tax credits, loans, and grants have incentivized nearly $500 billion in private capital investments in the green energy sector, surprising economists and the administration.

The policies have spurred the creation of 13 million jobs, including 800,000 in the manufacturing sector alone, the lowest continuous unemployment rate in 50 years, a higher labor participation rate, and an inflation rate that has fallen to 3% from its peak. As a result, economists have lowered the probability of an economic recession in the near term.

Spending from the four bills doesn’t equal the scale of the Green New Deal, the $10 trillion program scientists and environmentalists insist is necessary to decarbonize the economy by 2050. But their passage was a historic victory for pro-democratic, pro-environmental forces and the first step of a green transition.

The bills were a compromise and reflected what Biden, Democrats, and the mass democratic movement could achieve given the political balance of forces: total GOP obstruction, fierce resistance from the fossil fuel industry, and narrow Democratic Congressional majorities.

Instead of creating the “Big Green State” and a transition led by the public sector, the legislation guarantees a private sector-led transition. The legislation also contained painful concessions to the fossil fuel industry, including expedited drilling on public lands, anti-labor forces, and deficit hawks. However, progressives were able to win many vital components and far-sighted programs that can be built upon.

Turning away from failed neoliberalism

In the 1970s, global capitalist elites sought to replace the dominant Keynesian economic and the New Deal political framework with what came to be known as neoliberalism. Unregulated capitalism was the response to the falling rate of corporate profits, insulated against restrictions imposed by democratic governance, the growth of organized labor and expansion of social benefits, and the triumph of anti-colonial revolutions in developing nations, where significant resource extraction occurs.

_{^{Republicans are latching onto the term ‘Bidenomics’ and giving it their own definition, hoping to turn the president’s catchphrase against him. Here, Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, holds a ‘Bidenomics’ sign during a news conference in the U.S. Capitol on July 11, 2023. Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., and Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., and also appear. | Tom Williams / CQ Roll Call via AP}}

Neoliberalism entailed top-down economic management, curtailed democratic rights, drastically reduced public investment, removed barriers to capital flow and trade, and greater labor mobility, resulting in the “race to the bottom” embodied in “free trade” agreements/zones such as NAFTA and the EU, as well as in international bodies like the World Trade Organization.

Neoliberalism accelerated the climate crisis by weakening environmental protections and outsourcing jobs and pollution to developing economies without ecological protections.

Its proponents opposed national industrial policies, and neoliberalism proved dismal economically with declining growth rates.

U.S. neoliberalism manifested itself as “Reaganomics”— the fraud that massive tax cuts to corporations and the wealthy would “trickle down” to working-class communities, and everyone would prosper. “We’re still waiting for that,” quipped Biden.

Instead, deep economic and social inequality resulted, including among historically marginalized and people of color communities and in entire regions. Corporate concentration accelerated, and the global wealth gap grew to staggering proportions.

Reaganomics starved public infrastructure and research and development funding, privatized public assets and services, gutted environmental and consumer protections, and cut the social safety net to the bone.

Corporations outsourced millions of manufacturing jobs to low-wage zones in the Global South, often facilitated with government subsidies. The exodus hollowed out domestic manufacturing capacity, and working-class communities were left to pick through the wreckage.

Federal and state governments under right-wing GOP control engaged in union-busting, suppressed wages and benefits, gutted worker safety protections, and slashed taxes on the wealthy and corporations.

A breaking point

Neoliberalism culminated in the 2008-09 global financial crisis. This proved to be a breaking point, and neoliberalism lost its legitimacy as growing numbers of mainstream economists and the public turned against it.

The financial crisis, coming on top of all the other wreckage, fueled working-class insecurity and anger. Right-wing demagogues and the Tea Party movement found fertile ground to spread confusion, racist scapegoating, and misdirected anger. Polarization and political crisis ensued, seen most starkly with the rise of Trump, MAGA, and Brexit on the one hand and the response to the candidacy of democratic socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt, on the other.

Discontent and protest in the U.S. and globally met neoliberalism at every turn. Leading circles of the Democratic Party, exemplified by Biden, economists, and policymakers, also drew their own conclusions. They reacted to the economic carnage, the global financial crisis, and the 2016 elections by gradually abandoning some of neoliberalism’s main premises.

According to Biden’s economic advisors, the economic policies of neoliberalism—though they do not reference the term itself—cannot solve the deep structural and social crises they have created, let alone respond to enormous new domestic and global challenges: the rapidly growing climate and ecological crisis, geopolitical shocks from the global financial meltdown, the global supply chain crisis from the COVID pandemic, the rise of China as a global economic powerhouse, and price shock to global energy markets resulting from the Russian war of aggression against sovereign Ukraine.

*_{^{Green energy is a key part of the Biden administration’s economic agenda. | via White House}}*

Nevertheless, the Biden administration believes the new framework and policies will help build a new majority political coalition and social consensus, much like the New Deal coalition, which dominated politics for 40 years. Such a coalition would include a green power capital sector and constituencies benefiting from green energy construction that would form a counterweight to fossil fuel power.

Such a broad coalition and constituencies in every state and congressional district could lock in transformative policies, including a green transition, empowering workers and working-class and marginalized communities, and addressing wealth and social inequality.

“Bidenomics” and the turn from neoliberalism creates a new terrain of struggle. Suppose Biden, Democrats, and the pro-democracy coalition prevail in the 2024 elections over MAGA austerity, anti-science, climate denialism, and fossil fuel power. The new economic and social framework and policy trajectory can be defended and expanded in that case.

Bigger Democratic Congressional majorities, including more progressives at all levels, can dramatically grow its scale, deepen its reform character, address its weaknesses, strengthen its anti-monopoly, pro-labor, environmental justice, and democratic components, and restore elements discarded in the legislative process like free childcare, child tax credit, and further taxing the rich. And momentum to address the existential climate and ecological crises can be accelerated.

(Next: Three Pillars of Bidenomics)

_{^{This article reflects the opinions of its author.}}

_{John Bachtell is president of Long View Publishing Co., the publisher of People’s World. He is active in electoral, labor, environmental, and social justice struggles. He grew up in Ohio, where he attended Antioch College in Yellow Springs. He currently lives in Chicago.}