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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/08/200831112345.htm
Loneliness is recognized as a serious threat to mental health. Even as our world becomes increasingly connected over digital platforms, young people in our society are feeling a growing sense of isolation. The COVID-19 pandemic, which forced many countries to implement social distancing and school closures, magnifies the need for understanding the mental health consequences of social isolation and loneliness. While research has shown that social isolation during childhood, in particular, is detrimental to adult brain function and behavior across mammalian species, the underlying neural circuit mechanisms have remained poorly understood.
A research team from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai has now identified specific sub-populations of brain cells in the prefrontal cortex, a key part of the brain that regulates social behavior, that are required for normal sociability in adulthood and are profoundly vulnerable to juvenile social isolation in mice. The study findings, which appear in the August 31 issue of Nature Neuroscience, shed light on a previously unrecognized role of these cells, known as medial prefrontal cortex neurons projecting to the paraventricular thalamus, the brain area that relays signals to various components of the brain's reward circuitry. If the finding is replicated in humans, it could lead to treatments for psychiatric disorders connected to isolation.
"In addition to identifying this specific circuit in the prefrontal cortex that is particularly vulnerable to social isolation during childhood, we also demonstrated that the vulnerable circuit we identified is a promising target for treatments of social behavior deficits," says Hirofumi Morishita, MD, PhD, Associate Professor of Psychiatry, Neuroscience, and Ophthalmology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, a faculty member of The Friedman Brain Institute and the Mindich Child Health and Development Institute, and senior author of the paper. "Through stimulation of the specific prefrontal circuit projecting to the thalamic area in adulthood, we were able to rescue the sociability deficits caused by juvenile social isolation."
Specifically, the team found that, in male mice, two weeks of social isolation immediately following weaning leads to a failure to activate medial prefrontal cortex neurons projecting to the paraventricular thalamus during social exposure in adulthood. Researchers found that juvenile isolation led to both reduced excitability of the prefrontal neurons projecting to the paraventricular thalamus and increased inhibitory input from other related neurons, suggesting a circuit mechanism underlying sociability deficits caused by juvenile social isolation. To determine whether acute restoration of the activity of prefrontal projections to the paraventricular thalamus is sufficient to ameliorate sociability deficits in adult mice that underwent juvenile social isolation, the team employed a technique known as optogenetics to selectively stimulate the prefrontal projections to paraventricular thalamus. The researchers also used chemogenetics in their study. While optogenetics enables researchers to stimulate particular neurons in freely moving animals with pulses of light, chemogenetics allows non-invasive chemical control over cell populations. By employing both of these techniques, the researchers were able to quickly increase social interaction in these mice once light pulses or drugs were administered to them.
"We checked the presence of social behavior deficits just prior to stimulation and when we checked the behavior while the stimulation was ongoing, we found that the social behavior deficits were reversed," said Dr. Morishita.
Given that social behavior deficits are a common dimension of many neurodevelopmental and psychiatric disorders, such as autism and schizophrenia, identification of these specific prefrontal neurons will point toward therapeutic targets for the improvement of social behavior deficits shared across a range of psychiatric disorders. The circuits identified in this study could potentially be modulated using techniques like transcranial magnetic stimulation and/or transcranial direct current stimulation.
This work was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health and the National Institute of Mental Health and The Simons Foundation.
Story Source:
Materials provided by The Mount Sinai Hospital / Mount Sinai School of Medicine. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.
Journal Reference:
Kazuhiko Yamamuro, Lucy K. Bicks, Michael B. Leventhal, Daisuke Kato, Susanna Im, Meghan E. Flanigan, Yury Garkun, Kevin J. Norman, Keaven Caro, Masato Sadahiro, Klas Kullander, Schahram Akbarian, Scott J. Russo, Hirofumi Morishita. A prefrontal–paraventricular thalamus circuit requires juvenile social experience to regulate adult sociability in mice. Nature Neuroscience, Aug. 31, 2020; DOI: 10.1038/s41593-020-0695-6
https://popularresistance.org/extreme-right-in-venezuela-seeks-to-sabotage-the-election/
By Katu Arkonada, La Jornada.August 31, 2020
| EDUCATE!
In a little more than three months, on December 6, parliamentary elections will be held in Venezuela. The previous elections were on December 6, 2015 and the opposition gained a majority thanks to the abstention of 2 million Chavista voters who decided to stay home and not vote.
But the circumstances today are different, and supporters of the policies of Hugo Chavez are more united after having had to deal with an infinite number of political, economic and military attacks proceeding from U.S. imperialism and their local lackeys, attacks that intensified since the self-proclamation by Juan Guiadó that he was the president on November 23, 2019.
Due to this, the most extreme wing of the Venezuelan opposition, which forms the so-called G4 (that includes the parties Voluntad Popular of Leopoldo López, Primero Justicia of Henrique Capriles, Acción Democrática and Un Nuevo Tiempo) plans, with U.S. support, to boycott the electoral process and renew the mobilization in the streets.
Colombian sources with access to U.S. government functionaries and to leaders of the Venezuelan opposition became aware of a recent video conference meeting including members of the U.S. foreign affairs office ”virtual embassy” for Venezuela in Bogota (Venezuelan Affairs Unit or VAU) and several G4 opposition leaders headed by Leopoldo López, the President of the Voluntad Popular Party. In this meeting they finalized plans and procedures to sabotage the December elections.
However, it springs to our attention that Juan Guaidó did not attend this meeting, and thus it appears that the main thrust and support of the U.S. is tilting toward someone with credentials of violence, such as the leader of the Voluntad Popular.
In this meeting, Leopoldo Lopez, who already has experience with organizing violent sabotage, asked each party in the G4 to recruit 100,000 volunteers, with the goal of mobilizing them earlier, but especially on Election Day, to cover all the polling places in the country.
The source, present at this videoconference meeting, revealed that, as Leopoldo Lopez explained, the volunteers should have the ability to manipulate and document real and supposed irregularities in the process, for example, the use of government resources by the PSUV and allied parties. Other objectives are to show a low voter turnout, demonstrate violations by those forces carrying out Plan República, participate decisively in demobilizing the vote, and, a key aspect, to carry out protest and “civil resistance“ activities to slow the voting of supporters of the government and of those sectors of the opposition who favor dialogue and would make the new National Assembly appear legitimate.
The G4 will not participate in the electoral process, and, so their goal seems to be to document the problems created by their own interference, so that they may later try to convince the international community that it was undemocratic. The challenge, however, is to convince the anti-Chavista forces of the wisdom of a strategy that will leave them out of the next National Assembly.
But the G4 leader went even further, proposing a goal more ambitious – 200,000 volunteers so that they would be able to have 25 activists at each polling place. He suggested using a database of volunteers who participated in the failed “humanitarian aid“ operation attempted against Venezuela from Colombia in February 2019.
Richa Bhala, an official of the Venezuelan Affairs Unit in charge of counter-intelligence from her post as Vice-consul of the United States Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan, accepted and praised this proposal, insisting on the need to broaden the base of the opposition platform. Rafael Foley, head of the U.S. foreign affairs office “virtual embassy” for Venezuela in Bogota took the opportunity to insist that the G4 should convert from a more or less organized opposition to a structure of resistance and civil disobedience that goes beyond the four opposition political parties.
Seemingly, according to the same sources, soon there will be an appeal by the G4, seeking to add new forces to a new opposition platform.
If, as appears to be the case, the boycott strategy again is merged with one of violence, and the Guiadó effect is abandoned, since it turned out to be a bluff that simply united the Chavista forces, what we will see in the new opposition platform is the convergence of the same contradictions and aspirations of the traditional political parties, that have not been able to unite on anything other than their hate of Chavismo and their subordination to the United States.
In any case, December 6 is marked in red letters on the Venezuelan opposition’s schedule book, and they are seeking to take new steps to try to defeat Chavismo.
Whatever happens in the U.S. elections, since, even if Trump doesn’t win, the same interests that led Obama to sign an executive order declaring Venezuela to be a threat to the national security of the United States will still remain in power. In 2021 a new chapter in the Bolivarian and Chavista Revolution will begin, while still defending the oil and the national sovereignty.
https://popularresistance.org/trump-and-dejoys-main-objective-incapacitate-the-us-postal-service/August 31, 2020
| EDUCATE!
What We Need Now Is To See A Plethora Of Other States Joining In These Lawsuits That Are Charging Trump And DeJoy With Deliberate Voter Suppression.
NOTE: We remind our readers that the Democrats are also responsible for the demise of the US Postal Service. They could have repealed the 2006 law that requires it to pre-fund 75 years of retirement, including health benefits, a law the Democrats nearly unanimously supported. This costs the USPS over $5.5 billion every year. The Democrats are concerned right now because the elections are at risk. There is no reason to believe they will care after November.
In this newsletter, we outline the timeline of the bipartisan attack on the postal service and what steps are needed to protect and expand it. Now is the time to push for these changes. – MF
Why in the world would anyone want to do great harm to one of America’s oldest and most revered institutions, the USPS? Why? It’s the upcoming presidential election, stupid!
Talk about a massive dilemma by which our democracy may very well be destroyed! Americans have watched as Louis DeJoy, the newly appointed Postmaster General testified before the Senate and House committees relative to the current conditions of the U.S. Postal Service; conditions that are now at one of the lowest points in USPS history.
At these hearings, we saw a snide, arrogant DeJoy make statements that almost everyone knew were false and misleading. He tried to minimize the entire crisis in the USPS by saying that, while it has some problems, they aren’t that bad. He stressed that there would be no problem in delivering the mail-in-ballots to states on time. There is no way in the world that Democrats will ever believe that.
He also said he would not reverse the situation by which mailboxes and sorting machines were removed from around the country and overtime was canceled. He even said that he was not the one who did all these things that were having an adverse effect on deliveries. Maybe I missed it but I didn’t hear him say who it was that did it. Somebody did, and I’d bet it was him.
One cynical House Democrat asked him if he was confident that he would receive a presidential pardon just as Roger Stone did. He said that that was an outrageous remark. Well, that Democrat and all his committee colleagues have that terrible feeling that he was given his job with the aim that he would do everything he could to slow down mail deliveries during the election.
Democrats know full well that if Trump and DeJoy succeed in greatly slowing down mail deliveries, that it could give Trump the reelection that he so desperately wants.
Trump and Senate Republicans refuse to approve the $25 billion funding that Democrats want to be used in significantly improve Postal Service operations. They will block and obstruct every attempt by Democrats to get this funding approved.
All America has heard Trump state that the ballots-by-mail system is ripe for fraud and it will end up being a colossal failure. This is all about reelecting him, and he knows that if he doesn’t stop massive balloting by mail he will lose and lose big.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, together with five other Senate Democrats, sent a letter to the Board of Governors of the Postal Service, demanding that they reverse those DeJoy policies. Also, they should look into the possibility of removing him as Postmaster General.
90 House Democrats have demanded that the Board of Governors immediately take action to remove DeJoy “to protect this critically important institution. “
There has to be a way that Democrats can prevent Trump and DeJoy from using the Postal Service as a massive voter suppression tool. House Democrats do not have the power to force DeJoy to restore the mailboxes and sorting machines and allow the use of overtime. But, there are other ways, such as these:
Here’s an article from the Huffington Post that reports that “The states of New York, Hawaii and New Jersey filed a lawsuit Monday against President Donald Trump, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy and the U.S. Postal Service over changes at the agency ahead of the election. The lawsuit also includes New York City and San Francisco as plaintiffs.”
What we need now is to see a plethora of other states joining in these lawsuits that are charging Trump and DeJoy with deliberate voter suppression. That is the way to stop these two from, as the article says, “undermining a federal election.”
Most of those who purposely violate the law, those who are called criminals, do it in secret, so they can’t be caught. In the case of Trump, he isn’t even trying to hide what he is doing. He blatantly indicates that he wants to see the ballots by mail system crippled, and he, no doubt, is using DeJoy to accomplish his objective.
This Postal Service situation is not your typical governmental problem that needs to be addressed, it is a massive, national dilemma in which the eventual outcome, whether the delivery system functions effectively during the election or does not, will determine whether our democracy survives or is no more.
By John Kiriakou, Consortium News.August 31, 2020
https://popularresistance.org/know-your-rights-dont-talk-to-cops-at-the-airport/
When An ICE Officer Stopped Me After I Got Off The Plane I Knew The Harassment Was About To Begin.
But I was ready for it.
I confess to a dislike of the police; any police at any level. I dislike equally local cops, state troopers, federal law enforcement from a myriad of agencies and prison guards. I’ve always said, “Give a man a badge and a gun and you’ve created a monster.” I also believe that my opinion about law enforcement in the United States is in the minority.
Most Americans like and trust the police. We’re bombarded on social media by exhortations to “Back the Blue!” We say “thank you for your service” along with the military at sporting events. I’m something of a “progressive constitutionalist.” I believe in freedom, equality, and individual rights. I’m not going to back the blue.
I had the pleasure of flying back to the United States this week from an overseas trip. The airline socially distanced passengers, so I had an entire row all to myself. It was one of the easiest flights I’ve had in recent memory. I arrived at John F. Kennedy International Airport after 10 hours in the air and was happy to be home. I have an app on my phone called “Mobile Pass” that allows me to put my passport, flight information, and photographs in the Immigration and Customs Enforcement system so that I can just breeze through Immigration and go on to baggage claim. It saves a lot of time.
‘Come With Me Sir’
I got off the plane at JFK having already completed the Mobile Pass and I went directly to the very short line for Mobile Pass holders. The ICE officer was very nice, but after he scanned my passport, he said, “Please come with me, sir. We’re going to have you talk to one of my colleagues.” I’m not stupid. I know what that means. It means “let the harassment begin.” But I was ready for it.
I was placed in secondary inspection, where I sat for about 25 minutes. Finally, an ICE agent named Officer Oh called my name. He was assisted by Officers Hippolyte and Castellano. Apparently, it takes three armed people to deal with me.
“Have you ever been arrested for a crime?” I wasn’t surprised that was the first question. I’ve said consistently over the past eight years that I wear my conviction for blowing the whistle on the CIA’s torture program like a badge of honor. I said so on CNN, MSNBC, Fox News and NBC’s Today Show. It’s no secret.
My response was, “You know I have been. You otherwise wouldn’t ask me a stupid question like that, which has literally nothing whatsoever to do with my travel today.” The ICE agents looked at each other. “What was the nature of your crime?” Oh responded. I think he also didn’t expect my own response.
“I’m going to tell you guys exactly the same thing that I tell your friends at Dulles Airport when they harass me. I’m represented by counsel. I don’t talk to cops. You have no right to detain me. I’m a journalist and I’m going to write about this incident using your true names. And you have no legal right to keep me from entering my own country.”
‘Free To Go’
Again they looked at each other. Finally, Oh said, “you’re free to go.”
You’re damn right I am.
I called my attorney as soon as I got out of baggage claim. He told me that I did the right thing and that he wouldn’t have given answers any different from the answers I gave. It occurred to me, though, that most Americans have no idea what their rights are.
The American Civil Liberties Union has a great article on its website telling people what to do when they are confronted by tin horn authority at airports around America. The bottom line is that if you are an American citizen or a permanent resident (green card holder) you don’t have to answer any questions.
ICE can delay you, but they cannot stop you from entering your own country. Tell them that. Repeat it as a mantra if you have to. And remember my personal mantra. It works:
“I’m represented by counsel. I don’t talk to cops. You have no right to detain me.”
Cops are tough when they can hide behind each other, behind their guns, behind their badges, or behind qualified immunity. But they’re powerless when faced with the power of the Constitution. Know your rights.
John Kiriakou is a former CIA counterterrorism officer and a former senior investigator with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. John became the sixth whistleblower indicted by the Obama administration under the Espionage Act—a law designed to punish spies. He served 23 months in prison as a result of his attempts to oppose the Bush administration’s torture program.
https://popularresistance.org/medicare-for-all-is-a-beginning-not-the-end-point/
By Don Fitz, Green Social Thought.August 31, 2020
| CREATE!
As a coup de grâce to the Bernie Sanders campaign Joe Biden declared that he would veto Medicare-for-All. This could drive a dedicated health care advocate to relentlessly pursue Med-4-All as a final goal. However, it is not the final goal. It should be the first step in a complete transformation of medicine which includes combining community medicine with natural medicine and health-care-for-the-world.
Contrasting Cuban changes in medicine during the last 60 years with the US non-system of medical care gives a clear picture of why changes must be all-encompassing. The concept of Medicare-for-All is deeply intertwined with attacks on Cuba’s global medical “missions” and the opposite responses to Covid-19 in the two countries.
Going Forward Or Going Backward?
Immediately after the 1959 revolution, Cubans began the task of spreading medical care to those without it. This included a flurry of building medical clinics and sending doctors to poor parts of cities and to rural areas, both of which were predominantly black.
As the revolution spread medicine from cities to the country, it realized the need to expand medical care across the world. This included both sending medical staff overseas and bringing others to Cuba for treatment. Cuba spent 30 years redesigning its health care system, which resulted in the most comprehensive community-based medicine in the world.
Throughout the expansion of health care, both inside the country and internationally, Cuban doctors used “allopathic” medicine (based largely on drugging and cutting, which is the focus of US medical schools). But they simultaneously incorporated traditional healing and preventive medicine as well as respecting practices of other cultures.
Today, the most critical parts of the Cuban health care system include (1) everyone receives health care as a human right, (2) all parts are fully integrated into a single whole which can quickly respond to crises, (3) everyone in the country has input into the system so that it enjoys their collective experiences and (4) health care is global.
In contrast, the call for Medicare-for-All by the left in Democratic Party is a demand for Allopathy-for-US-Citizens. It would extend corporate-driven health care, but with no fundamental change towards holistic and community medicine. Though a necessary beginning, it is a conservative demand which does not recognize that a failure to go forward will inevitably result in market forces pushing health care backward.
There is already a right-wing effort to destroy Medicare and Medicaid in any form and leave people to only receive medical treatment they can pay for. It is part of the same movement to destroy the US Post Office and eliminate Social Security. It is funded by the same sources trying to get rid of public education except for a few schools that will prepare the poor to go to prison or be unemployed. These are neoliberals who believe that Black-Lives-Do-Not-Really-Matter. They hate all the gains won during the last century and a half and want to overturn any form of environmental protection, any workers’ rights, the eight-hour work day, child labor laws, and civil rights, including voting rights.
Destroying Health Care Advances Of The Cuban Revolution
What does the Cuban health care have to do with Medicare-for-All in the US? Cuba has a lower infant mortality rate and longer life expectancy than the US while spending less than 10% per person annually on health care. It has provided medical education to so many from other countries that in 1999 it opened the Latin American School of Medicine to bring students from impoverished countries to study and become doctors. By 2020 it had trained over 30,000 doctors. It had also trained huge numbers of other health professionals from beyond its shores.
Even before Cuba brought in students, it sent its own professionals on “missions” to help those in other countries. Over the past six decades more than 400,000 Cuban medical professionals have worked in 164 countries and improved the lives of hundreds of millions of people.
The US response to this incredible international medical revolution documents that it is not satisfied to stop medical care from improving but has an irresistable urge to reverse gains across the globe. The US government glommed onto complaints from physicians in multipe countries who whined because Cuban doctors would go to jungles and other dangerous areas where the the rich urban doctors refused to venture. Of course, the US had its own reasons to despise Cuban medical assistance.
Cuba has long done humanitarian work in education as well as medicine which puts its northerm behemoth to shame. Its actions expose that health care can be done vastly cheaper with better outcomes than corportate medicine, which traumatizes financiers of the sickness industry.
Republicans and Democrats are firmly united with corporate media in hiding Cuban medical accomplishments from the US population. They defnitely do not want other poor countries to replicate Cuba’s system. Horrifed at the prospect that Cuban health care would shine as an example, the US went to work to undermine and destroy Cuban medical internationalism in any way it could.
In August 2006 the George W. Bush administration began the “Cuban Medical Professional Parole” program to encourage Cuban medical staff on international missions to desert and move to the US, with no questions asked. Only 2-3% did so; but their departure left those poor countries with less care.
This is in line with any corporate goals to destroy local health care and replace it with profit-based health care across the globe. Driven by the same market factors that compel extraction, transportation and food production industries to go international, the US sickness industry likely feels the urge to create and control a global market of “health care providers.” One of its main obstacles will be community health systems, which actually work much better for poor people.
As the knowledge of the success of Cuba’s medical information spread, its detractors flew into a frenzy and clutched onto wild hallucinations. As accurately explained by Vijay Prashad, they fantasized that Cuba was engaging in “human trafficking” by forcing its doctors to work internationally. The accusation is blatantly absurd since Cuban doctors always have the choice of whether to broaden their medical knowledge by going abroad and treating diseases that have been eradicated in Cuba or to stay at home.
It is true that its doctors have incredibly low wages (as do all working people in Cuba) due to the destructive effects of the US embargo. In one of the great ironies of propaganda machines, the US seeks to criminalize Cuba in the eyes of the world by screeching that medical wages are low while itself being the cause of meager pay.
Results of this attacking Cuba during Covid-19 have been murderous. After Lenín Moreno became president of Ecuador in 2017 he abruptly veered from what he promised and ordered Cuban doctors to leave. At the same time Venezuela and Cuba had a total of 27 Covid-19 deaths, Ecuador’s largest city, Guayaquil, had an estimated death toll of 7,600. Similarly, when the neoliberal Jair Bolsonaro took power in Brazil in 2019, he threw out Cuban doctors. This left the country with rising infant mortality and so unprepared for Covid that even inviting them back was unable to undo the damage. Following the 2019 anti-democratic coup in Bolivia, the ultra right-wing Jeanine Áñez had herself anointed as president and expelled Cuban doctors, which devastated that country’s health care system. Although Bolivia is a physically isolated country with a population of only 8.7 million it had 2200 deaths by June 2020.
Who Coped With Covid-19?
The fact that Cuba had gone far, far beyond Medicare-for-All is what allowed it to have such spectacular control over Covid. Its politicians unified behind the ministry of health which developed a national strategy. That strategy was in effect before the island’s first victim had succumbed to the disease. Social distancing, masks and contact tracing were universally accepted. According to Susana Hurlich, medical students went door-to-door collecting data, distributing homeopathic medication (PrevengHo-Vir), and, most important, finding out what problems people needed help with.
Neighborhood doctors collected data to send to polyclinics and helped make certain that residents’ medical and other needs were met. Clinic staff met needs that neighborhood doctors could not provide and sent patients they could not care for to hospitals. Hospital doctors slept at hospitals for 14 day shifts before being quarantined for another 14 days so they would not infect their families or communities.
On July 18, deaths from Covid-19 numbered 140,300 in the US and 87 in Cuba. Though its population is only 30 times that of Cuba, the US had 1,612 times as many deaths.
As US politicians conspired with corporations to see how much profit could be made from the pandemic, Cuban health care went international. When northern Italy became the epicenter of Covid-19 cases, one of its hardest hit cities was Crema. On March 26, 2020 Cuba sent 52 doctors and nurses. A smaller and poorer Caribbean nation was one of the few aiding a major European power.
On March 12, 2020 nearly 50 crew members and passengers on the British cruise ship Braemar either had Covid-19 or were showing symptoms as the ship approached the Bahamas, a British Commonwealth nation. During the next five days, the US, the Bahamas, and several other Caribbean countries turned it away. On March 18, Cuba became the only country to allow the Braemar’s over 1000 crew members and passengers to dock.
The incidents of Crema and the Braemar were hardly without precedent. They resulted from 60 years of medical internationalism by Cuba. Just as Cuba’s actions during Covid-19 reflected its development, so the horrible expansion of the disease in the US, Brazil and India showed the lack of concern under reactionary rule.
Capitalism has exterminated hundreds of millions, if not billions, of people in order to consolidate growth and power. Whether enslaving Africans, or slaughtering native Americans to steal land, or experimenting with nuclear bombs during WWII, or destroying health systems that would prevent mass death during a pandemic, these are merely “costs of doing business” to capitalism. Driving native peoples off of land is not unique to US in the past, but continues today throughout Latin America, Africa, Asia and the Pacific Islands.
Trump has terribly bungled coping with Covid-19, but the approach of Democrats is not essentially different. Neither corporate party has any intention of providing Cuban-type care within the US. And they certainly do not even imagine putting protection of the world’s poor from Covid above profit potentials for US corporations. They never had any intention of telling US public that 72 countries had requested Cuba’s Interferon Alpha 2B for treating Covid-19. They wanted people to believe that only an American or European country could discover treatment.
Is Thinking Beyond Medicare-For-All Part Of The Real World?
Is the idea of a radical health care transformation even worth talking about as right-wingers seem to be on the move across much of the world? Let’s remember our past. During the time the reactionary Richard Nixon was president (1969-1974), despite an overwhelming pro-war victory, the following were accomplished under his reign: declaration of an end to the Vietnam War, start of the Food Stamp program, decriminalization of abortion, recognition of China, creation of Environmental Protection Agency, passage of Freedom of Information Act, formal dismantling of FBI’s COINTEL program, creation of Earned Income Tax Credits, formal ban on biological weapons, and passage of the Clean Water Act.
We have never won as many gains since then, even when there was a Democratic House, Senate and president. The essential difference between then and now was the existence of mass movements. Perhaps it is the time for today’s movements to ask if a fair and just payment of reparations by the US and western Europe for the pain and suffering they have caused throughout the world should include providing medical care for those billions of people who Cuba cannot afford to help. Health care is not genuine health care if it fails to be health-care-for-the-world.
How White Supremacists Are Infiltrating Police Departments
FEATURING MICHAEL GERMAN – When 17-year old Kyle Rittenhouse shot numerous protesters active with Black Lives Matter in Kenosha, Wisconsin, he tried to turn himself in. After all he was…
Headlines: August 31, 2020
Violence flared in Portland, Oregon, where one person associated with a rightwing group of protesters was shot and killed on Saturday. The man was part of a caravan of conservatives…
Rising Up with Sonali
Imagine NBA Stars -- outside giant sports arenas used as public polling and voting locations -- acting as poll watchers insuring that urban voters, Black and brown folks, file in unsuppressed by armed Para fascists.
August 31, 2020 Peter Olney THE STANSBURY FORUM
https://portside.org/2020-08-31/call-arenas-defend-right-vote-defeat-trump
In the aftermath of the August 23rd police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin, the Milwaukee Bucks basketball team shut down their playoff game with the Orlando Magic in protest. This triggered shutdowns of other NBA games and negotiations with the owners on practical steps that could be taken to deal with systemic racism. Superstar LeBron James has long been leading a campaign to promote voting. The NBA players got the owners to agree to use their arenas as giant polling places. THIS IS BRILLIANT! In the center of mostly urban areas there will be giant public polling places that can be sanctuaries for unimpeded and unintimidated voting, in buildings designed to handle large crowds quickly and efficiently. Imagine NBA Stars outside as poll watchers insuring that urban voters, Black and brown folks, file in unsuppressed by armed Para fascists.
This is crucial to winning the swing states where enthusiasm for Trump is still riding high, and that he carried in the 2016 election. The margins in each of those states would have been overcome if Black people had voted. Here are the margins for Trump and the numbers of blacks who did not vote:
Trump won Wisconsin by
23,000 votes
… but in Milwaukee,
93,000 blacks didn’t vote
Trump won Florida by
113,000 votes
… but in Miami,
379,000 blacks didn’t vote
Trump won Michigan by
11,000 votes
… but in Detroit,
277,000 blacks didn’t vote
Trump won Pennsylvania by
44,000 votes
… but in Philadelphia,
238,000 blacks didn’t vote
Trump won North Carolina by
173,000 votes
… but in Charlotte, Raleigh, Greensboro and Durham,
233,000 blacks didn’t vote
Trump won Georgia by
211,000 votes
… but in Atlanta 530,000 blacks didn’t vote
(By The New York Times | Source: analysis of black citizen population estimates (2016 American Community Survey) and black citizen non-voting rates by state (2016 Voting and Registration Supplement to the Census Current Population Survey) by Karthik Balasubramanian, Howard University)
Now imagine if football players and their union follow suit and liberate their giant stadiums as poling places monitored by hulking offensive linemen. Seems far-fetched in a league that did not back Colin Kaepernick in his protest for Black Lives Matter in 2016. But the times they are a changing and swiftly. Check out Seahawks Coach Pete Carroll’s moving interview calling out systemic racism.
And what could be the role of the rest of the US labor movement? The pro athletes have 100% membership in their associations (unions). The rest of organized labor – public and private sector combined, is at 10%. There is talk about national strikes and those should not be ruled out, but a more plausible course of action in every major American urban center would be to join with NBA stars and provide a cordon sanitaire of safety for voting at arenas. This plays to labor’s continuing urban presence in many of these urban centers and to the fact that a large part of its public sector urban membership is people of color. How can labor play a role in fighting voter suppression? Labor can mobilize its ranks to provide massive security squadrons for urban arenas and maybe even some football stadia on November 3!
Call to Arenas and Dump Trump!
