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As we all sit helplessly agog at the latest spectacle going on in the US, here are some organizations to which you can donate (or volunteer) to help. How To Help Migrant Parents & Children Who Are Separated At The Border It's the least we can do. And for most of us, the most we can do. Where have we seen this before?  Message to My History Teacher, Who[m] I Once Asked Why No One Stopped the Concentration Camps: NEVER MIND BBC: US Separates 2,000 Children in Six Weeks NY Times: Taking Migrant Children From Families is Illegal, U.N. tells U.S. New Yorker: Taking Children From Their Parents is a Form of State Terror ( Canadians know about this .) Disaster capitalism: Military contractors making tens of millions helping Trump tear families apart ICYMI:  How To Help Migrant Parents & Children Who Are Separated At The Border

In my continuing (and usually failing) goal of remembering to write about things here , instead of just posting to Facebook, I feel I should write something about the student organizing and activism around gun violence in the US. This movement is the greatest thing to happen in the US in as long as I can remember. It stands with the Fight for 15 and Black Lives Matter as the most important movements of our present time. It has all the hallmarks of a true grassroots revolution. - It is self-organized. - Its spokespeople emerged organically. - It built quickly, because it has tapped into longstanding anger, and it resonates both deeply and broadly. - It is building on a local level to effect broad social change. - It is being organized from the bottom up, as opposed to, for example, the organizing around the election of Barack Obama. - It is using a variety of tools, and it appears to be fluid and agile around using different approaches as needed: walk-outs, public speaking, mainstre...

The freak show that is the Donald Trump presidency gives us so many things to lament, and mourn, and goggle at. But for one organization, it is a singular gift, valuable beyond all measure: that is the Democratic National Committee. For me, the worst part of the Trump presidency is not Trump. It is the enormous setback to -- maybe the death of, in my lifetime -- building a progressive alternative in the United States. Four decades of deindustrialization, job loss, corporate welfare, and ever-widening income inequality has brought progressive economic ideas to the forefront in the US, and has rejuvenated the appetite for making them a reality. The evidence is plentiful , from the fight for a $15/hour minimum wage to the jubilant crowds that greeted Bernie Sanders at every campaign stop. People are hungry for change, and many people are hungry for change from the left. Fill in the blanks. A vote for ____ is a vote for ____. And now we have Trump. Hillary Clinton supporters -- and of cour...

Like all good people, I am horrified by recent developments in the US, and like everyone who has been paying attention, not surprised. I take hope from the immediate and powerful resistance that has been set in motion. But also at the resistance, I am angry, too. What took you so long? Let's hope it's not too late. Here are a few things you can do to fight back. 1. Donate to the American Civil Liberties Union. For nearly 100 years, the ACLU has been fighting for the civil rights of people marginalized or targeted by the dominant culture. These are the people best equipped to fight back -- the best and the brightest of the resistance. Even a small one-time or monthly donation can make a difference. 2. Canadians, sign a petition calling on Prime Minister Trudeau and Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Ahmed Hussen, demanding that they repeal the so-called Safe Third Country Agreement with the United States, which would allow Canada to welcome people fleeing viole...

This is the best news I've seen in a long, long time. Chelsea Manning, the US army soldier who became one of the most prominent whistleblowers of modern times when she exposed the nature of warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan, and who then went on to pay the price with a 35-year military prison sentence, is to be freed in May as a gift of outgoing president Barack Obama. In the most audacious – and contentious – commutation decision to come from Obama yet, the sitting president used his constitutional power just three days before he leaves the White House to give Manning her freedom. Manning, a transgender woman, will walk from a male military prison in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, on 17 May, almost seven years to the day since she was arrested at a base outside Baghdad for offenses relating to the leaking of a vast trove of US state secrets to the website WikiLeaks. Nancy Hollander, Manning’s lawyer, spoke to the Guardian before she had even had the chance to pass on to the soldier the n...

Since I'm making an effort to put more of my thoughts here, I'm gathering up a bunch of my Facebook posts and responses. If we know each other on Facebook, apologies for the repetition. I find much of the analysis and commentary I've seen about the recent US election to be quite strange. Donald Trump has been elected President of the United States. That happened. Here's what didn't happen. 1. "The United States is a democracy. The people chose Trump, end of story." 60,467,601 US voters chose Hillary Clinton. 60,072,551 US voters chose Donald Trump. More than 100,000,000 Americans eligible to vote did not vote. More than 5 million Americans cannot vote because they are either incarcerated or have been incarcerated, and thus have been disenfranchised. There has been rampant voter suppression and vote fraud in both the primaries and the general election. The United States is also a democracy if you close your eyes and stop up your ears. Some views on winn...

I've spent the past several months reassuring my co-workers and baldly stating on Facebook that Donald Trump would not become President of the United States. The lesson for me and for many of us: never underestimate what angry, alienated people can be led to do. The racism, hatred, and violence that is always present in the United States, decades of hopelessness and downward mobility that have gone completely unaddressed, and a demagogue fearmonger unafraid to pander to the lowest strains of American life: and here we are. It would appear the system is less rigged than I thought. I thought the corporatocracy that controls the US would not allow this to happen. I thought Trump's presence on the right -- a huge boon to Democrats by shutting down left-of-liberal resistance -- would also drive moderate Republicans to vote Democrat. If either of these scenarios came into play, they were not of sufficient magnitude to overcome the popular discontent and desperation. I fervently hate ...

Many years back, I used to blog about a phenomenon called fascist shift . I borrowed the term from Naomi Wolf 's essential  The End of America , but the concept was something I had been thinking about for many years. In brief, fascist shift asks, What if we're all looking for jackboots and Sieg Heil and tanks rolling down Pennsylvania Avenue, and while we're keeping our eyes peeled for a scene from a black-and-white newsreel, a different brand of fascism moves in and sets up shop? What if today's fascism is more insidious and less obvious - and what if it's dressed up in a democracy costume? What if while you're saying That can happen here  and But they wouldn't do that , it already has, and they did. When you scroll through Wolf's ten indicators of fascism , are there any not seen in the US? And have any of them been repaired or reversed under Obama? Not a one. Now, though, Donald Trump's presidential bid and the many millions of Americans who supp...

I see a lot of excitement online, in places like Common Dreams and The Nation , and in my Facebook feed, about Bernie Sanders, supposedly remaking US politics, and Pope Francis, supposedly remaking the Roman Catholic Church. About Sanders, I shake my head and wonder why long-time Democrat voters do not see him and his candidacy for what it is. About the Pope, I wonder why progressive people allow themselves to care. Sanders is the new Dean Bernie Sanders has been praised as a maverick, an independent, and a socialist. All of which may have been true at various points in his political career. Right now Sanders is running for President  as a Democrat . He is not spearheading a movement to build a new alternative. He is not refusing corporate funding and appealing to the grassroots. He is not "challenging politics as usual," as headlines in progressive news sites often say. He is seeking the Democratic nomination, which means he will play within the boundaries of that game. And...

At last, it has happened . With Obergefell v. Hodges , same-sex marriage has been declared legal and constitutional in the United States. Same-sex couples can legally marry, just as opposite-sex couples have always had the right to do. Most importantly, laws prohibiting same-sex marriage are now unconstitutional.* For some years on this blog, I used to note every country that joined the equal marriage club, but about two years ago, I stopped counting . More than 20 countries now recognize same-sex marriage as a right, and that number continues to climb. This issue has always been, is, and always should be a complete no-brainer. Equality is equality. Rights are rights. We can't have rights for some and not others. That couldn't be more obvious. The debate in the US, especially the displays of extreme homophobia and bigotry from the other side, has helped the vast middle of the road to adjust to the idea. That's why yesterday's SCOTUS decision, although incredibly wonderf...

Katha Pollitt's new book, Pro: Reclaiming Abortion Rights , is a powerful gust of fresh, clean air that blows away the toxic stench of the current discourse about abortion. Pro is a thorough, no-holds-barred takedown of the hypocrisy of anti-abortion-rights movement - not only in the most obvious sense that people who claim to be "pro-life" also (usually) support war and the death penalty, oppose gun control, and encourage lethal terrorism against abortion providers and clinic staff, and of people who claim to care about women and children, but oppose all social supports that might improve the lives of actual living children. Pro also exposes the perhaps less obvious hypocrisy of how the anti-abortion movement has created conditions that result in more unwanted pregnancies, more abortion, more later abortions, and less safe abortions. Using unassailable logic and facts, Pollitt exposes what the real agenda of the anti-abortion movement is and has always been: punishing ...

"The Pink House", the last abortion clinic in Mississippi. The owner painted it pink so it would stand out, in defiance. I've thought a lot about heroes, that tremendously overused word, about who my heroes are and why I love them. Moral courage, as you may know, is my highest value. Now, reading this story in Esquire about Dr. Willie Parker, the last abortion doctor in the state of Mississippi, I realize there's another ingredient shared by all my heroes: an abundance of compassion. Dr. Parker, a committed Christian, embodies both physical and moral courage, refusing to run despite the knowledge that others who tread this path have been murdered. Dr. Parker fills a vital health and social need by performing abortions in Mississippi. But he does more than that. He offers compassion (along with education) to every patient. Dr. Parker not only wants women to decide for themselves whether and when to bear children. He wants to help free them of the guilt and shame that ...

Last September, when Tim Hudak announced that he intended to break Ontario's unions , it came as no surprise to labour activists. The head of Ontario's Progressive Conservative Party, cynically framing the issue as one of "choice," talked about "right-to-work" - a familiar euphemism for union busting - and repealing the Rand Formula. That 1946 Canadian Supreme Court decision ensures that everyone who enjoys the benefits of belonging to a union contributes union dues, which in turn ensures that union workplaces can survive. And that , in turn, sets a standard for all Ontario workers, union or not. This is one time the expression "a rising tide lifts all boats" - usually applied in defense of regressive economic policies - actually does apply. Union work sets a standard in any community for decent pay and humane working conditions. Unions are a bulwark against the low-wage economy that has decimated working conditions in the United States. Without u...

Abby Zimet reports on Common Dreams: Days before Bradley - now Chelsea - Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison for helping expose U.S. war crimes in Iraq, the Obama Department of Justice filed a petition in federal court arguing that the perpetrators of those crimes - Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld et al - enjoy “absolute immunity” against criminal charges or civil liability. The filing came in a suit brought by Sundus Shaker Saleh, an Iraqi single mother and refugee now living in Jordan, who alleges that the planning and waging of the Iraq war under false pretenses constituted a "crime of aggression" under a law used in the Nuremberg trials. Meanwhile, after the revolution...

The current New Yorker stories by Joseph Mitchell  has given me an opportunity to post something I've been meaning to share for ages. Last September, Jill Lepore unearthed an incredible bit of history, a piece of the American past that is  alive with us today, and more dangerous than ever. (I am generally interested in anything Lepore writes; last year I gushed over her reviews of books about Clarence Darrow , one of my abiding heroes.) In this piece, Lepore writes about the roots of political advertising - the falsehoods and trickery, the lies and slander, the deception and distortion, the swiftboating and smearing that make us grit our teeth in frustration. The advertising firms that design and disseminate those orchestrated lies can be traced back to one company, an operation called Campaigns Inc. Its first victim was Upton Sinclair, the writer and socialist and one-time candidate for Governor of California. He called it The Lie Factory. In 1934, Sinclair explained what d...

Ten years ago today, my partner and I took the day off work, dressed in many layers of clothing, and joined nearly a million people in the streets of New York City. It was February 15, 2003, and the world was saying no to war. The bitter cold didn't stop demonstrations in 80 Canadians towns and cities , including 150,000 people who braved minus-30 wind chill in Montreal. In the US, protests were held in 225 communities. In London, at least one million people gathered. Every European country saw huge crowds, but they were all topped by Rome, where three million people formed the largest antiwar demonstration in one place in history. In Australia, major protests were held in all six state capitals. The scientists stationed on Antarctica held a protest on the ice. In Brazil, in Argentina - in Tokyo, in Beirut - in Dhaka and Calcutta - in Seoul and Johannesburg - in every continent of the planet - large crowds gathered, all with the same message. In all, up to 30 million people in 800 ...

There are always at least two sides to every story. Long ago, in the American West, some pioneers and cowboys were killed by "Indians". More recently, Iraqi "insurgents" have killed US soldiers. When I was growing up, Vietnamese "guerillas" - I believe the technical term was gooks - were killing American soldiers, too. Those deaths were not trivial. Death is never trivial to the victims and the people who love them. But we understand that, had the US not invaded Iraq, Vietnam, (etc. etc.) - and had Europeans and their descendants not believed it was their divine right to own an entire continent and to cleanse it of its original habitants - those Iraqis, Vietnamese, and Native Americans wouldn't have killed those Americans. I used to have a political cartoon on my bulletin board: black South Africa was on the ground, its head held by the apartheid jackboot. Ronald Reagan, observing, said, "Gee, all that pressure on your foot must be tiring." ...