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Goodman: As Black History Month ends, resistance continues against the racist in chief
By Amy Goodman and Denis Moynihan Democracy Now!Mar 1, 2019
Many dared hope, after the 2008 election of Barack Obama, that the United States could someday enter a “post-racial” era. The election eight years later of Donald Trump to the same office demonstrated, sadly, that the scourge of racism is alive and well in America. Trump’s profound racism was described by his former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, when he testified before Congress Wednesday. Any attempt to heal the deep wounds of racism that scar this country must include a direct challenge to Donald Trump, our racist in chief.
“I know what Mr. Trump is. He is a racist. He is a con man. He is a cheat,” Michael Cohen said early in his statement to the House Committee on Oversight and Reform. He elaborated: “The country has seen Mr. Trump court white supremacists and bigots. You have heard him call poorer countries ‘s***holes.’ In private, he is even worse. He once asked me if I could name a country run by a black person that wasn’t a ‘s***hole.’ This was when Barack Obama was president of the United States.”
Cohen continued: “While we were once driving through a struggling neighborhood in Chicago, he commented that only black people could live that way. And, he told me that black people would never vote for him because they were too stupid.”
Cohen’s summary is damning enough, but Trump’s record of racism is much longer. “Trump’s presidency and entire career has been an affront to civil rights so nothing in Michael Cohen’s testimony is surprising for a person that has historically racialized and stigmatized those around him,” said NAACP President Derrick Johnson in a statement Wednesday. “From his racist housing practices, to his villainization of the Central Park Five, to his birther accusations against President Obama, to creating safe havens for white supremacists — all of this maps out the actions and personality of a liar and a racist.”
The housing discrimination Johnson mentioned refers to a 1973 federal lawsuit against Donald Trump and his father, Fred Trump, for discriminating against African-Americans seeking apartments. Beginning in the 1990s, Trump attacked Native Americans, questioning their heritage in his attempts to block tribal casinos that would compete with his failing ventures in Atlantic City. He aggressively urged restoration of the death penalty in New York after five youth of color were accused of raping a white woman in the Central Park Five case. All five were imprisoned for years, and later had their sentences vacated when the real perpetrator was identified. New York City awarded them over $40 million in damages. Trump, to this day, still insists they are guilty.
Trump launched his presidential campaign in 2015 by calling Mexicans murderers and rapists, and has made the vilification and persecution of Central Americans fleeing violence a pillar of his xenophobic immigration policies, which include building a wall along the southern border. He quickly attempted to implement his Muslim ban and was eventually allowed to enforce a watered-down version of it after the Supreme Court ruled in his favor.
February is Black History Month, and this year, 2019, marks 400 years since the first Africans kidnapped from their homelands were forcibly brought to North American shores and a life of slavery. Legendary escaped slave and abolitionist Frederick Douglass was born in February 1818. Malcolm X was assassinated on Feb. 21, 1965. Seventeen-year-old Trayvon Martin was murdered on Feb. 26, 2012. Our shortest month is devoted to this incredibly long and painful history.
This month, we visited the Legacy Museum and Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama, with its indoor museum and outdoor lynching memorial. These two sites convey the enormity and sweep of crimes against Africans brought here against their will, and the crimes perpetrated against their African-American descendants. From slavery, to Jim Crow and lynching, to mass incarceration, this history is portrayed in its stark brutality. But resistance to racism has also been a constant throughout U.S. history. It must be a part of our daily work, wherever we find it, whether in our communities, in Congress or in the Oval Office.
Veterans Call to Resist U.S. Coup in Venezuela
| Veterans Call to Resist U.S. Coup in Venezuela | Veterans For Peace Veterans For Peace is outraged at the unfolding coup d’etat in Venezuela, which is clearly being orchestrated by the U.S. government. Two hundred years of blatant U.S. intervention in Latin America must come to an end. www.veteransforpeace.org |
SAVE OUR VA
Save our VA
Veterans For Peace has an active working group that is busy educating other veterans on the dangers of privatization and advocating to stop these efforts and instead push for Fixing and Fully Funding the VA. Veterans For Peace has SAVE OUR VA ACTION TEAMS all over the country, flyering and protesting outside of VA Hospitals, submitting resolutions, visiting congressional leaders!
Make sure to check out our ACTION page to get resources and more!
To get involved in the Working Group, please contact Coordinator Skip Delano at sdelano897@aol.com
Background on VA Privatization
There are 22 million veterans in America. Of those 22 million, 9 million are enrolled in VA care, and 7 million get some or all of their care in VA hospitals. In addition, there are 45,000 vacant positions at VA hospitals across America. Most are vacant doctor, nurse & mental health positions. As VA vacancies go up, vet care goes down.
Since 2014, when the CHOICE program began, millions of vets have been sent into the private healthcare sector, and nearly 40% of all outpatient doctor visits have been routed into private healthcare. Many vets are dissatisfied with CHOICE and wait times for some vets are as long or longer in the private sector than they are at the VA.
THE PASSAGE OF THE 2018 MISSION ACT CONTINUES THE CHOICE PROGRAM AND THREATENS to drastically change how veterans receive healthcare. The Veterans Health Administration is under attack by groups who are encouraging the elimination of government programs and pushing the idea that only the private sector ‘works’. In surveys by Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) & Disabled Am. Veterans (DAV), a vast majority of vets say they don’t want private care – they want their VA doctors & nurses.
Joe Arpaio is not a ‘champion of the rule of law’ by a longshot
Letter to editor: Joe Arpaio is not a ‘champion of the rule of law’ by a longshot
Albert H. Maldonado, SalinasPublished 3:25 p.m. PT Sept. 12, 2018 | Updated 3:25 p.m. PT Sept. 12, 2018Buy Photo
(Photo: Argus Leader)
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Joe Arpaio is a federally convicted criminal. US District Judge Susan Ritchie Bolton in Arizona found him guilty of criminal contempt. Arpaio continued to make arrests based on skin color and on Hispanic surnames, defying Judge Bolton’s Order.
President Trump granted Arpaio a pardon just before sentencing.
Judge Bolton did not remove Arpaio’s judgment of conviction. Bolton wrote on October 19, 2017, “It [pardon] releases the wrongdoer from punishment and restores the offender’s civil rights…It does not erase a judgment of conviction, or its underlying legal and factual findings.”
The pardon “does not revise the historical facts.” A pardon does not expunge Arpaio’s federal conviction
After the pardon, Vice President Mike Pence said Arpaio is, “A tireless champion of strong borders and the rule of law.” The Monterey Peninsula Republican Women Federated has praised Arpaio as a champion of law enforcement and public service.
The Republican Women Federated is entitled to freedom of speech and freedom of association by inviting Arpaio to Carmel. It is not entitled to claim ownership of the truth. A corrupt White House has pardoned Arpaio. A local Republican outfit has given Arpaio a platform for his racist views.
— Albert H. Maldonado, Salinas
-flyerProtest The NRA
The NRA is having a fundraiser at the Fairgrounds on Saturday, April 28th. Veterans For Peace, Monterey Chapter 46, is organizing a peaceful, non-violent protest demonstration that day at 4PM across the street from the entrance to the Fairgrounds and we invite everyone to join us who opposes the NRA’s refusal to allow any sort of gun control regulations, in general, and their opposition, in particular, to a ban on military assault-type rifles from being sold to the pubic.
The members of Veteran For Peace have all been trained in the use of assault rifles. Those of us who were in combat zones carried them around all day. Some of us killed people with them. That’s what they’re made for – killing people. They’re not meant for hunting, or personal protection, or target shooting. They’re meant for killing people and they are very good at doing that. The members of Veterans For Peace do not think people should be allowed to be walking the streets of our cities with these weapons.
We will also be protesting the bad judgment and insensitivity of the management of the Fairgrounds for allowing the NRA to hold its event there so soon after the slaughter of the high school kids in Florida. Some of us haven’t gotten over that yet.
Every one is welcome to join us. Kids, high school and college students, working people, old retired folks – everyone. Bring a sign or a banner, if you like, or just come as you are. The important thing is to show up and be counted among the citizens who are standing up to the NRA and saying, “No more!”.
Dan Turner’s letter in Monterey Herald
The NRA is having a fundraiser at the Fairgrounds on Saturday, April 28th. Veterans For Peace, Monterey Chapter 46, is organizing a peaceful, non-violent protest demonstration that day at 4PM across the street from the entrance to the Fairgrounds and we invite everyone to join us who opposes the NRA’s refusal to allow any sort of gun control regulations, in general, and their opposition, in particular, to a ban on military assault-type rifles from being sold to the pubic.
The members of Veteran For Peace have all been trained in the use of assault rifles. Those of us who were in combat zones carried them around all day. Some of us killed people with them. That’s what they’re made for – killing people. They’re not meant for hunting, or personal protection, or target shooting. They’re meant for killing people and they are very good at doing that. The members of Veterans For Peace do not think people should be allowed to be walking the streets of our cities with these weapons.
We will also be protesting the bad judgment and insensitivity of the management of the Fairgrounds for allowing the NRA to hold its event there so soon after the slaughter of the high school kids in Florida. Some of us haven’t gotten over that yet.
Every one is welcome to join us. Kids, high school and college students, working people, old retired folks – everyone. Bring a sign or a banner, if you like, or just come as you are. The important thing is to show up and be counted among the citizens who are standing up to the NRA and saying, “No more!”.
Letter to the Editor, of the Monterey Herald
Thomas Lee,
President Trump wants $716 billion for defense spending next year, a huge increase that ignores ever-increasing deficit borrowing. Since the US defense budget is already astronomical, why? Using fancy dance steps, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis now says that the US needs to shift gears to anticipate conflict with China and Russia.
But what ever happened to the War on Terror, used for the last 17 years to justify Pentagon spending, the “generational struggle”? A decade ago one general said it would last for 50 to 100 years.
Now China? The US spends roughly three times more for national defense. Secretary Mattis says that we have to be very wary of Chinese exercises in the South China Sea. But the South China Sea is right next to China. Are exercises there a big deal? Russia? The US spends about nine times more for national defense. Russia’s disputes are with countries that border it. There is no problem in the Western Hemisphere or in most of the world.
Veterans for Peace (Chapter 46) believes someone needs to restore our country to sanity. It’s time to spend less, not more, for the Pentagon. Congressman Jimmy Panetta, you’re our best hope right now.
Political Organizing for Peace and Social Justice
Veterans for Peace Ch. 46 Monterey and the Veterans Organization at The Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey are hosting the second forum in a series of talks related to peace and social justice.
The Honorable Sam Farr is the speaker. This event is open to the public & free of charge.
Join
Veterans from any branch of military service, family members, friends, and anyone interested in ending war are invited to join Veterans For Peace.