Civil Rights

In 1939, Sebastian Haffner sat down and wrote a pre-history of Nazism.

Nazism had not been inevitable. It had not progressed steadily without setbacks. But it had been growing for many years, even before the name for it existed. It had been coming since the end of the Great War.

By the late 1920s, according to Haffner, “Berlin became quite an international city. Admittedly, the sinister Nazi types already lurked in the wings, as ‘we’ could not fail to notice with deep disgust. read more

One of the good things about speaking at big conferences is that people come up to you afterwards believing you have the power to change the world. 

One of the bad things about speaking at big conferences is that people come up to you afterwards believing you have the power to change the world.

A mother with tears in her eyes just asked me to help free her son, a young man with an IQ of 78 who was apparently set up by the NYPD.  He is Muslim.  This was 8 years ago.  He’s read more

On Thursday I was on a train to New York and received an email announcing a protest at the offices of New York’s two U.S. Senators over their cosponsorship of an AIPAC-driven bill that would move the United States closer to war on Iran.  I wrote back, saying, hey, I happen to be on my way to New York and will try to get there. 

When I got there, there was a small gathering of protesters, divided into two groups, those choosing to comply with police requests to stand inside a free-speech-cage read more

Three weeks ago I blogged that I would not endorse Occupy the RNC or DNC because both groups were refusing to state that they opposed violence.

Occupy the RNC has now put this on its website:

“We are not organizing actions, especially violent ones. That would just be stupid. We exist to provide information and facilitate logistics for people resisting the RNC.”

Not how I would have put it.  Nor would I have added:

“Don’t fuck with us. We’ll sue you.”

But foreswearing read more

A living-wage campaign at the University of Virginia has been pressing the university’s six-figure-salary administrators to treat its workers better for the past 14 years, sometimes winning higher wages, but always watching them be wiped out by the soaring cost of living in Charlottesville. The workers, lacking a union, and witnessing retaliation against some who have spoken out, have been reluctant to take the lead in the fight, but students have stepped up to the task.

From February 18 read more

Attorney General Eric Holder on Monday explained why it’s legal to murder people — not to execute prisoners convicted of capital crimes, not to shoot someone in self-defense, not to fight on a battlefield in a war that is somehow legalized, but to target and kill an individual sitting on his sofa, with no charges, no arrest, no trial, no approval from a court, no approval from a legislature, no approval from we the people, and in fact no sharing of information with any institutions read more

Good things do come out of the Virginia state legislature.  That normally reprehensible body has just stood up to the federal outrage that has come to be known as the NDAA.  The letters stand for the National Defense Authorization Act, but at issue here is not the bulk of that bill.  Virginia’s state government has no objection to dumping our grandchildren’s unearned pay into the pockets of war profiteers while our schools lack funding.  At issue is the presidential read more

After publishing this report I was contacted by ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement).  The individual involved never returned my call.  Instead I heard from Brian Hale who said he had been with Director Morton at the event recently held at the University of Virginia and discussed in my report.  He told me that ICE in fact had nothing to do with contacting activists, that in fact Ed Ryan (who had contacted local residents from read more

John Morton, Director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, spoke on Monday at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.  Here’s the University’s report.  Here’s the local newspaper’s. Both report only on what Morton said, without mentioning what he was asked about by members of the audience following his opening remarks. 

He could have been asked about record breaking deportations and the recklessness that has deported U.S. citizens.  Perhaps read more