We Can Learn from the Greensboro Massacre

A new book called Morningside: The 1979 Greensboro Massacre And The Struggle For An American City’s Soul by Aran Shetterly provides a detailed examination, in historical context, of a largely forgotten incident in which KKK and Nazi shooters (some of them veterans of the war on Vietnam), with the complicity of local and federal “law enforcement,” shot at black people in Greensboro, North Carolina, killing five, wounding many, and dragging social progress backwards.

I was nine years old and geographically not that far away but cannot recall hearing one word about the Greensboro Massacre at the time it happened, November 3, 1979. But on November 4, 1979, the “Iran Hostage Crisis” was launched as the biggest news story for over a year to come, yellow ribbons appeared on trees everywhere, and friends at school who made casual jokes about murdering black people but never imagined living near violence or Klan rallies began doing things like singing a song in a school show with the lyrics “Bomb Bomb Bomb Bomb Bomb Iran.” (More apologies owed the Beach Boys, and the threat to Iranians has never yet gone away.)

Lizard Liar

The Fragments of the World Seek Each Other

Words Kill - Why Israel Gets Away with Murder in Gaza and Lebanon

The official Israeli army version of why it has targeted civilian areas during the intense and deadly bombardment of September 20 in south Lebanon is that the Lebanese are hiding long-range missile launchers in their own homes.

 This official explanation by the Israeli military was meant to justify the killing of 492 people and the wounding of 1,645 in a single day of Israeli strikes.

Tell Congress to Act Now on Federal Cannabis Reform

Fist holding a marijuana leaf

There are several promising incremental reform bills that if enacted would move federal cannabis policy in a positive direction — and benefit millions of Americans. Most recently, the Dismantling Outdated Obstacles and Barriers to Individual Employment (DOOBIE) Act, a bill that would prevent federal agencies from considering past cannabis use in employment suitability or security clearance decisions, passed a Senate committee and is now headed to the full Senate for consideration. 

In addition to the DOOBIE Act, there are also several other key incremental cannabis reform bills circulating in Congress. Passing these bills would be a major step forward for our movement and further build the momentum for comprehensive federal cannabis legalization.

Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum presents 70th

Children of artists who created blacklisted,
pro-union movie reunite for event
 

“Escalation Dominance” . . . and the Prospect of More Than 1,000 Holocausts

Everything is at stake. Everything is at stake with nuclear weapons.

 While working as a nuclear war planner for the Kennedy administration, Daniel Ellsberg was shown a document calculating that a U.S. nuclear attack on communist countries would result in 600 million dead. As he put it later: “A hundred Holocausts.”

 That was in 1961.

 Today, with nuclear arsenals vastly larger and more powerful, scientists know that a nuclear exchange would cause “nuclear winter.” And the nearly complete end of agriculture on the planet. Some estimates put the survival rate of humans on Earth at 1 or 2 percent.

 No longer 100 Holocausts.

Why did Israel kill Hassan Nasrallah?

On Friday September 27, 2024. Israel launched a massive bombing on residential areas of Haret Hreik neighborhood of Beirut's southern suburbs, that resulted in the killing of Hezbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah along with 12 top Hezbullah commanders. The attack was carried out by six US made aircraft that carried six two tons bombs. The explosions left a crater 98 feet deep.
It was the deadliest such attack on Beirut since the 2006 Israeli war on Lebanon, with Lebanese health authorities reporting at least 12 people killed and dozens more wounded in the attack.
 
Nasrallah is survived by his wife, Fatima Yassin, his three sons Jawad, Mohammed-Mahdi and Mohammed Ali, and several grandchildren, according to the AFP. His eldest son, Hadi, was killed in 1997, while fighting against Israeli invading forces in south Lebanon, and his daughter Zeinab was reportedly killed in the Beirut airstrike on Friday. According to CBS News.
 
Nasrallah became secretary general of Hezbullah in 1992 at 35, the public face of the group.

Looking for Progressive candidates in Columbus? Look no further than the West Side

Christine Cockley

Some neighborhoods on the West Side are in dire need of compassionate, empathetic and shared experienced leadership. Welcome news is how a fresh-faced progressive Democrat – Hilltop resident Christine Cockley – is poised to win Ohio House District 6 this November, which encompasses most of Columbus’s West Side.

If anyone has any doubt whether a progressive is best qualified to take on the disheartening and daunting challenges of some West Side neighborhoods, just take a drive down Sullivant Avenue where poverty and despair continue to besiege several neighborhoods. Where the numbers of addicted and houseless keep growing – in lock step with the rising cost of housing, spurred on by landlord greed and the gentrification of some West Side neighborhoods.

Certainly, few from the Ohio GOP care much about the West Side, if rarely a thought. Local establishment Democrats, such as Mayor Ginther, have had plenty of time to affect change, but little has on Sullivant Avenue over the previous decade.

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