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Activists in Ferguson Are Dying and It's Time to Ask Questions |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=44868"><span class="small">Jason Johnson, The Root</span></a>
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Saturday, 06 May 2017 12:59 |
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Johnson writes: "The most iconic photo of the Ferguson, Mo., protests, if not the entire Black Lives Matter movement, is of Edward Crawford defiantly throwing a tear gas canister back at riot police. And now he's dead."
Edward Crawford returns a tear gas canister fired by police who were trying to disperse protesters in Ferguson, Missouri, August 13, 2014. (photo: Robert Cohen/St. Louis Post-Dispatch)
Activists in Ferguson Are Dying and It's Time to Ask Questions
By Jason Johnson, The Root
06 May 17
 he most iconic photo of the Ferguson, Mo., protests, if not the entire Black Lives Matter movement, is of Edward Crawford defiantly throwing a tear gas canister back at riot police. And now he’s dead.
Crawford was found shot to death Thursday night in his car, just like activist Darren Seals in 2016 and protester DeAndre Joshua the night of the Ferguson verdict in 2014. The latter two had gunshot wounds to the head and their cars were lit on fire. Crawford, it is believed by police, shot himself in the back seat of his car either in an attempted suicide or by accident.
Given the justifiable lack of trust between local activists, black residents and the police, however, questions remain about this story. In order to bring justice to Crawford, his family and the entire Black Lives Movement, it’s about time we started asking tough questions about their deaths.
Missouri state Sen. Maria Chappelle-Nadal broke the news on Twitter this morning that Crawford had been killed. What was striking is not just the anguish in her tweets but also the details she provides.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch initially noted only that Crawford died of gunshot wounds. It now says that the death was reported to the medical examiner’s office as a suicide, but the medical examiner hasn’t issued an official cause of death yet, pending an autopsy. The Dispatch’s report conveniently leaves out that Crawford’s death is strikingly similar to that of Seals and Joshua, whose deaths were so similar that even the St. Louis Police Department thought they were linked by the same killer.
Chappelle-Nadal, who represents Ferguson and is a firebrand for the Black Lives Matter movement, has been following the tragic story as it happened and has expressed doubts about the cause of Crawford’s death.
“I found out this morning another young man from my district died in the same fashion as two or three other people who were active in Ferguson,” she said in a speech on the Missouri Senate floor today around 9:15 a.m. CDT. “The people who were murdered at this point, they were all people who have been seen prominently in the media.”
Chappelle-Nadal noted to The Root that there are a number of militia groups in Missouri, and anyone seeking to strike a symbolic blow against the Black Lives Matter movement could easily be behind these actions.
“He gave us the reason to say, ‘Fight back, fight back, fight back,’” she said this morning. “No matter if it was a suicide, a mistake or a murder. He’s gone. This is somebody who represents the movement. This is another prominent person from the Ferguson movement.”
As the day goes on and more details trickle out, it doesn’t make it any easier to determine the cause of Crawford’s death, which opens the door to fear, speculation and, potentially, belief that it’s a conspiracy. Why would Crawford, a father of four who, according to his family, appeared to be in high spirits after getting a new job, just kill himself in his car? Moreover, the latest reports are that Crawford was in the back seat and two women were in the front. Suicides are usually committed alone, away from anyone who could possibly prevent the suicidal person from going through with the process. Who were the two women, and what are their full statements about the death?
It is possible to believe that Crawford’s death was just an accident. It is possible to believe that he decided to take his own life in full view of other people in the car. It is also possible, in a town where police claimed that 19-year-old Michael Brown punched out a cop and then charged into a hail of bullets from 30 feet away in broad daylight, that police could be completely lying to cover up some more nefarious cause of death. There is a long history in America of the police jumping to the conclusion that everything, from shootings to hangings of black people, is a suicide so as not to tug too hard on the strings of violent white supremacy that hold communities together.
We are in an era where the White House considers Black Lives Matter to be a terrorist organization. Deliberate attacks against black people who are fighting for justice—whether the Rev. Clementa Pinckney of Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C., or half a dozen other activists killed by white nationalists in the last decade—are not far-fetched. Regardless of the eventual conclusions about Edward Crawford, St. Louis police have still suggested that the deaths of Joshua and Seals were likely homicides.
School, the post office and the mall will still be open on Crawford’s birthday, and he won’t get a special on PBS narrated by Samuel L. Jackson, but like many forgotten martyrs of the movement, he was a human being, too. Crawford was a dedicated activist for people on the ground who needed someone to stand up for them. Let’s hope that in investigating his death, the local community in Ferguson will fight for him in death as hard as he fought for them in life.
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FOCUS: Trumpcare Is the Best Advertisement for Nationalizing Insurance |
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Saturday, 06 May 2017 10:56 |
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Cole writes: "The sadism and greed of the American Republican Party was on full display Thursday, as the House GOP voted to destroy Obamacare and remove the coverage for pre-existing conditions (50 million Americans suffer from them)."
Trumpcare will make health insurance too expensive again for the 40 million people who were uninsured in 2008. (photo: Mark Wilson/Getty Images)
Trumpcare Is the Best Advertisement for Nationalizing Insurance
By Juan Cole, Informed Comment
06 May 17
he sadism and greed of the American Republican Party was on full display Thursday, as the House GOP voted to destroy Obamacare and remove the coverage for pre-existing conditions (50 million Americans suffer from them). Oh, this sabotage is camouflaged, but the way Trumpcare would work would make health insurance too expensive again for the 40 million people who were uninsured in 2008. People will be shifted into pricey high-risk pools. Ending the individual mandate would ensure that healthy young people were exempted from having coverage, making it impossible to establish pools so private insurers can cover pre-existing conditions or chronic ones and still remain in business.
Apparently what the old white men of the GOP minded most of all about Obamacare was that it removed from the more racist states in the union the ability to shield rich white taxpayers from paying to keep the children of minorities alive. (Their image of the situation is anyway false; half of those living below the poverty line are white).
Here are some of the countries that are better than the US Republican Party:
President Hassan Rouhani of Iran has pledged universal health coverage in Iran by 2018. The GOP is always going on about how Iran is the world’s major sponsor of terrorism (this is not true), but even these bloodthirsty ghouls apparently are better than US Republicans inasmuch as they want to make sure poor children don’t have to just die for lack of money to pay for treatments.
Then there is China, where the government has successfully covered all 1.3 billion citizens. The Republican Party has made its way in the world by promising that if some businessmen are allowed to get fabulously wealthy that will lift all boats. What they said Thursday is that there are 40 million boats they won’t be lifting. But now the Chinese Communist Party has shown that it really can lift all boats.
Given the serious commitment of the Chinese Communist Party to green energy and meeting the goals of the Paris Accord, and the way in which it has lifted over a billion people out of poverty and given them universal health care, it seems obviously a superior party to the American GOP if you don’t happen to be a billionaire. It used to be boasted by the US Republicans that they provided an increased standard of living as well as democratic freedoms, but they don’t seem nearly as committed to either of these goals as Beijing is.
It is not clear why there is private health insurance. There are some things that the market does poorly and should be nationalized, as is the case in most advanced countries. The electric grid is another. The American myth that all government enterprises are inefficient and monopolistic ignores the fact that most large corporations in the US are de facto monopolies and are not particularly efficient.
The one percent who profit from health insurance will also try to tell you that government health care takes forever to see you. America’s privatized system also can take a long time to see you. Anyway, nationalizing health insurance would not stop people from going to a private hospital and paying out of pocket if they wanted to.
Here are the countries with a single payer system, which is defined this way “The government provides insurance for all residents (or citizens) and pays all health care expenses except for co-pays and coinsurance. Providers may be public, private, or a combination of both.”
Norway 1912 Single Payer
Japan 1938 Single Payer
United Kingdom 1948 Single Payer
Kuwait 1950 Single Payer
Sweden 1955 Single Payer
Bahrain 1957 Single Payer
Brunei 1958 Single Payer
Canada 1966 Single Payer
United Arab Emirates 1971 Single Payer
Finland 1972 Single Payer
Slovenia 1972 Single Payer
Luxembourg 1973 Insurance Mandate
Italy 1978 Single Payer
Portugal 1979 Single Payer
Cyprus 1980 Single Payer
Spain 1986 Single Payer
Iceland 1990 Single Payer
None of these countries is bankrupt. In fact, health care costs in these states are lower than in the United States and in many of them health statistics are superior to those of the US. Spain, Iceland, the UK, Portugal and Italy all have a life expectancy higher than the US.
Over a dozen other advanced countries have a two-tier system: “Two-Tier: The government provides or mandates catastrophic or minimum insurance coverage for all residents (or citizens), while allowing the purchase of additional voluntary insurance or fee-for service care when desired.”
Many two-tier countries also have lower health care costs and better health statistics than the US.
The US is the only advanced economy where millions are left without health insurance and are one illness away from bankruptcy and one paycheck away from dying or seeing their children die.
Even developing countries like Ecuador have quadrupled spending on health care and have markedly improved the lives of those living under the poverty line.
Raw American capitalism hasn’t increased the average wage of the average worker since 1970. It apparently can’t provide universal health care insurance to Americans. It is time for the American public to realize it is being taken for a ride. There are several industries that need to be nationalized. The electrical grid and some utilities are on the list, in order to fight climate change. But really, the only proper response to the vicious brutality that is Trumpcare is to punish the insurance companies who bought and paid for the congressmen that voted it in, by just having the government take over their industry.
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What the Resistance to Trump Can Learn From Latin America |
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Saturday, 06 May 2017 08:30 |
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Excerpt: "It is hard to deny the authoritarian tendencies that Donald Trump has shown in his first 100 days as president of the United States. These tendencies have drawn comparisons to the classic image of a Latin American dictator, and more specifically the caudillo - or strongman leader - by commentators from across Latin American."
Protesters in Bolivia wave a giant wiphala, a symbol of indigenous heritage. (photo: Patrick Breen)
What the Resistance to Trump Can Learn From Latin America
By Jeff Abbott, teleSUR
06 May 17
Latin America has a long history of resisting authoritarian and fascist regimes, which often were supported by U.S. governments.
 t is hard to deny the authoritarian tendencies that Donald Trump has shown in his first 100 days as president of the United States. These tendencies have drawn comparisons to the classic image of a Latin American dictator, and more specifically the caudillo — or strongman leader — by commentators from across Latin American. From his taste in decor and his adversarial relationship with the media, to his fundamental assault on human rights, the similarities are hard to contest.
Our neighbors to the south have a long history of resisting authoritarian and fascist regimes, which often were supported by U.S. governments. They were able to survive under difficult situations and — thanks to social movements — move the region in a more progressive direction. After decades of struggle, here are four lessons that movements in Latin America can teach those in the United States organizing against their own authoritarian leader.
1. Defend public services
Today, as Trump and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos move to further dismantle the public education system and impose a neoliberal model of education, the Chilean mobilization against the U.S.-imposed dictatorship can provide a guide for the defense of public services in the United States.
In 1973, the CIA sponsored a coup d’état led by General Augusto Pinochet against the democratically elected President of Chile, Salvador Allende. Following the coup, Pinochet began to implement the first neoliberal economic reforms to the economy. Public institutions, such as education, health care and pensions were privatized. These reforms were led by the former economic students of Milton Friedman from the University of Chicago.
María Loreto Muñoz Villa was only one-year-old when Pinochet seized power. At age 13 she became the president of her class, and eventually participated in the student movements of the 1990s. Today she continues to work to challenge neoliberalism in Chile.
“Neoliberalism creates an illusion of well-being, that is really not there. In Chile, the debt, the long work hours, requires that people mobilize,” Muñoz Villa said. However, it is difficult, “for people to mobilize because of debt, because if they stopped working, they couldn’t pay their debts. Since 2000, the movement has worked with people to see this as the product of neoliberal politics.”
These impacts led people to organize around certain slogans, such as free education. In 2011, tens of thousands of students took to the streets to demand a free public education. The movement looked to challenge the privatized educational system that was established by the Pinochet dictatorship. The privatization denied an affordable quality educational system to the majority of Chileans.
Chile’s student movement has led to changes in Chile’s educational system — including free higher education to 50 percent of the country’s poor — following victory of socialist presidential candidate Michelle Bachelet in 2013. She did this through the implementation of a 25 percent corporate tax to raise money for public education.
Faced with increasing poverty, pensioners and other community activists also began organizing during the administration of Bachelet to demand the end of the Pinochet-era privatized pension system. They argued that the current pension system provides very little to pensioners, all while the companies that manage the pensions earn massive profits. There were massive protests that drew hundreds of thousands to the streets. These efforts led to the recent announcement by Bachelet that her administration will begin to overhaul the country’s pension system.
These campaigns and movements all arose from a shared understanding that neoliberalism is at the root of social inequalities in Chile. According to Muñoz Villa, the rise of Trump means that movements must organize against both his more overt repressive policies and the social impacts of neoliberalism.
This defense of public services, such as education, is already well established in the United States. Teachers of the Chicago Teachers Union have led the charge to protect the public education system. Their movement has been strengthened through their connections with teachers in Mexico and in South America. These relationships need to be strengthened across the country as the struggle to defend public services heats up in the coming months.
2. Build territorial autonomy
The historic dispossession of indigenous lands and territory in the United States has continued into the 21st century. Within the first weeks of his administration, Trump systematically dismantled legislation to protect the environment from extractive industries. He has also repeatedly expressed his interest in expanding mining activities, pipelines and hydro energy, which will continue to threaten indigenous land. These assaults on indigenous territory in the United States reflect the trend in Latin America, where over the last 30 years, indigenous communities have built movements across the hemisphere in defense of their land from the expansion of mega-projects.
Protesters adopted the slogan “Que se vayan todos,” or “They all must go,” and sought to replace the corrupt political system that led to the 2001 crisis. In the course of two weeks, four presidents were forced to resign due to the popular protests. Furthermore, the movement contributed to the emergence of direct democracy on street corners, where neighbors would come out and work together to resolve problems within their neighborhoods.
“The piquetero movement did not only resist the neoliberal politics, they created productive ventures,” said Raul Zibechi, a Uruguayan journalist, author and social movement analyst. “They ended their dependence on the state, and began working on autonomy. Not an ideological autonomy, but a practical autonomy.”
Workspaces were recuperated by employees who returned to work to find locked doors and shuttered businesses. Following the crisis, more than 180 cooperatives were formed by their workers. By 2014, this number had expanded to 311 businesses that employed 13,462 workers.
The rise of the movement eventually contributed to the narrow victory of Néstor Carlos Kirchner in the May 2003 presidential. His administration’s first steps were to renegotiate the country’s debt, and to break ties with the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.
4. Move beyond political power
The story of Argentina also serves as a warning to the movement in the United States about the danger of focusing solely on winning electoral victories without also building alternative forms of power beyond the state. Zibechi argues that the rise of Kirchner led to the decline of the piquetero movement and is an example of how a movement can be co-opted by politicians in order to achieve power.
“Kirchner’s policy consisted of simultaneously enacting strategies to integrate, co-opt and discipline the piquetero organizations,” wrote sociologist Maristella Svampa.
Kirchner spoke out against the popular protests, stating that the piqueteros should use more traditional democratic means, such as voting, rather than blocking roads and picketing. Furthermore, many middle-class voters, who made up many of the neighborhood associations, were taken in by the Kirchner campaign, believing that it was an anti-neoliberal administration. But his administration never led to a move towards a social and economic alternative.
The failure of the subsequent administration of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner to fully transform the political situation led to the eventual return of the neoliberal influence in Argentina, and the election of right-wing politician Mauricio Macri in 2015.
A key lesson from the piquetero movement in Argentina and the movements against neoliberalism in Chile is that finding the means of constructing new forms of social relations outside the neoliberal and traditional political structure is a necessity for those organizing against Trump. These local solutions can provide communities with the means of building sustainable movements to resist the draconian policies of any government.
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Trump Supporters Celebrate Imminent Loss of Their Health Insurance |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=9160"><span class="small">Andy Borowitz, The New Yorker</span></a>
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Friday, 05 May 2017 14:07 |
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Borowitz writes: "Moments after House Republicans voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act on Thursday, millions of Trump supporters celebrated the imminent loss of their health insurance."
Trump rally. (photo: Spencer Platt/Getty)
Trump Supporters Celebrate Imminent Loss of Their Health Insurance
By Andy Borowitz, The New Yorker
05 May 17
 The article below is satire. Andy Borowitz is an American comedian and New York Times-bestselling author who satirizes the news for his column, "The Borowitz Report." 
 oments after House Republicans voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act on Thursday, millions of Trump supporters celebrated the imminent loss of their health insurance.
From coast to coast, Americans who cast their votes for Donald J. Trump expressed jubilation at finally being relieved of the burden of being insured in the event of catastrophic illness.
“Ever since President Trump was inaugurated, I’ve been counting the days for him to take away my health insurance,” Carol Foyler, a Trump supporter in Houston, said. “Today I just want to say thank you, Mr. President, for keeping your promise.”
Harland Dorrinson, a Trump voter from Tallahassee, Florida, said that he was “excited as hell about losing my health insurance” but sounded a more cautious note.
“I just hope the Senate doesn’t come in and give me back my health coverage,” he said. “Right now this all feels too good to be true.”
Most Trump supporters, however, would not let such gloomy predictions about the future ruin what for them was a day of unbridled celebration.
“Knowing that Trump could take away my Obamacare makes me feel super optimistic about what he’s capable of,” Tracy Klugian, of Columbus, Ohio, said. “I can’t wait until he gets rid of my Medicare.”
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