PROTEST RALLY TO COMMEMORATE 2018 DAHYAN SCHOOL BUS MASSACRE

https://popularresistance.org/protest-rally-to-commemorate-2018-dahyan-school-bus-massacre/





By Emad Almarshahi,Hod Hod News.

August 10, 2021
RESIST!


Yemeni and other Arab and international community organisations have on Tuesday held a protest rally denouncing the crimes committed by the Saudi-led coalition against the Yemeni people.

The rally, which was held in in front of the United Nations building in New York City, came to mark the anniversary of the Dahyan student bus massacre that was committed by the US-backed Saudi aggression’s airstrikes in 2018, killing 40 children in Saada province.

The participants called the rally of “For the grievances of the children of Yemen”, and said they considered the Dahyan student bus crime in Saada and other massacres by the aggression coalition in various Yemeni province as contradicting international humanitarian norms, charters and laws that criminalise targeting civilians.

They denounced the international silence towards the crimes of aggression against civilians and even children amongst the Yemeni people.

The protesters condemned the continued US support for the Saudi regime and its provision of weapons that kill Yemeni children.

The rally was attended by a number of activists from American organisations against the Saudi-led war on Yemen, with the participation of members of an international campaign team to end the siege on Sana’a International Airport.

Israel uses fake photo to justify shooting woman

https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/tamara-nassar/israel-uses-fake-photo-justify-shooting-woman




The Israeli army lied about a weapon it claimed a Palestinian woman tried to use before soldiers shot her on Tuesday.

A picture posted on Twitter by the army spokesperson shows a hand holding a chef’s knife with a brown handle.

But the photo is more than three years old.


The army claimed its soldiers “identified a suspicious woman” near the junction leading to Yitzhar, a colonial stronghold of extremist Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank.



The woman “pulled out a knife and tried to stab an Israeli soldier in the area,” the army stated.

Soldiers then “began a suspicious arrest procedure that included shooting at the terrorist’s lower body,” the army added.

Shahar Glick, a correspondent for the Israeli army radio, identified the woman as 23-year-old Fairuz Albu.

She is reportedly being treated at the Rabin Medical Center in Petah Tikva, near Tel Aviv. Her condition is unknown.

But the low-resolution picture posted by the Israeli army is a cropped version of an image posted by the pro-Israel Twitter account Behind the News on 13 February 2018.


The 2018 tweet claims the knife was confiscated by the Israeli army from a “Muslim terrorist” in the occupied West Bank city of Hebron.



Referring to Tuesday’s shooting, Glick tweeted, “This is the knife that was used to carry out the attack.” He repeated the army’s claims and included the image of the knife.

The picture attached to Glick’s tweet is a slightly zoomed-out version of the one posted by the Israeli army, but it is evident both are cropped versions of the picture posted in 2018.


The fabrication was quickly spotted and exposed by Palestinians:


Palestinian media circulated a video said to show the scene of Tuesday’s shooting.



No Israeli soldiers were injured during the incident, as in many previous cases in which an alleged Palestinian attacker was shot or killed.

This is not the first time Israeli officials present old or falsified media in order to justify crimes against Palestinians.

Israel propagandists, including Naftali Bennett – who is now prime minister – repeatedly used fake or manipulated photos and videos to justify Israel’s massacre of Palestinian civilians in Gaza in May.
Killed father of five

Meanwhile, Israeli occupation forces fatally shot a Palestinian man, Imad Ali Muhammad Dweikat, with a live bullet to the chest on Friday.

Dweikat was reportedly shot during protests Palestinians have been organizing in Beita to resist a new Israeli colonial outpost built on Jabal Subeih in May.

The settlement, Evyatar, is located on a hill encompassing land that belongs to the Nablus-area Palestinian villages of Qabalan, Yatma and Beita. The outpost has been previously evacuated, but settlers have returned to it.

Israeli forces have killed a number of Palestinians in Beita, including two children who were friends, in recent months.

Dweikat was taken to Rafidia hospital in Nablus, where he was pronounced dead.

The 38-year-old was a father of five. Local media circulated pictures of Dweikat and his children.



At least 59 Palestinians in Beita were injured by Israeli weapons on Friday, including 20 by rubber-coated steel bullets and more than 30 by tear gas, according to the Palestine Red Crescent Society.



On Tuesday, Palestinians in Beita buried Shadi Salim, the town’s water engineer who was killed by occupation forces late last month as he carried out his duties.

His body had been held by Israel for several days.

Mourners chanted, “Without you we are thirsty,” paying tribute to his vital role in keeping their taps running.



“Reduce” shootings

Amid the near-daily grind of Israeli occupation forces killing Palestinians trying to go about their daily business, Israeli army chief Aviv Kochavi has requested that officers “reduce the number of shootings of Palestinians by soldiers,” Tel Aviv daily Haaretz reported.

He requested the assignment of “more senior officers” during operations so that high-ranking personnel could make decisions.

However, this implies that Palestinian killings are the result of errors committed by low-ranking members of the military, rather than the predictable result of long-standing policy and systematic violence that has always been supported and directed from the top.

Israeli occupation forces operate a trigger-happy policy with utter disregard for Palestinian lives.

That the upper echelons approve of this violence is evidenced by the fact that Israeli soldiers who kill or injure Palestinians are virtually assured of impunity.

In 2016, Israel’s best-known human rights group B’Tselem decided to stop referring complaints about army violence against Palestinians to Israel’s military self-investigation system.

“We will no longer refer complaints to this system, and we will call on the Palestinian public not to do so either,” the group’s executive director said at the time.

“We will no longer aid a system that whitewashes investigations and serves as a fig leaf for the occupation.”

B’Tselem has often noted that contrary to Israeli army claims about strict open-fire regulations, violence against Palestinians is wanton and routine.

“Well-armed, heavily defended security personnel use lethal fire not as a last resort (if it is at all necessary), but as the go-to response, even when a knife attack could clearly be averted with less injurious means,” B’Tselem stated in 2019.

“This trigger-happy policy, which is encouraged by government ministers, members of [the] Knesset and senior defense and law-enforcement officials, is still in place after dozens of people have been killed.”

Captain Ward Boston's Testimony Regarding USS Liberty Cover Up

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbktndjTmH0

Israel lobby helps Shontel Brown defeat Nina Turner

https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/michael-f-brown/israel-lobby-helps-shontel-brown-defeat-nina-turner




Shontel Brown stormed back from a double-digit deficit to defeat progressive candidate Nina Turner Tuesday in the Democratic primary for an open congressional seat in Ohio.

Centrist presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden both soundly beat progressive Bernie Sanders in the district so in that regard it’s not an enormous surprise that the centrist candidate managed a comeback victory.

The Cleveland seat was vacated when the incumbent Marcia Fudge resigned to join the Biden administration as housing secretary.

Brown’s win will be celebrated by Israel supporters, who poured huge amounts of cash into the campaign to defeat Turner.

Despite national attention, turnout was reportedly low.

If, as expected, Brown wins the general election in the strongly Democratic district in November, she will hold the seat for a year. She would have to run again in the 2022 midterms when the entire House comes up for reelection.

Brown and Turner both raised significant amounts of money in what may well prove to be the most expensive special election of the year.
Anti-Palestinian candidate

The race turned increasingly combative in July, pitting the centrist and anti-Palestinian Brown against Turner, a supporter of the progressive Squad who has expressed views far more open to Palestinian rights.

Brown, who was heavily supported financially by DMFI PAC, an offshoot of the lobby group Democratic Majority for Israel, can be expected to staunchly favor Israel in congress and not raise concerns about its apartheid policies.


In March she tweeted her thanks to the pro-Israel organization for its endorsement, noting that “the US and Israel have a solid and unbreakable bond with shared democratic values and common interests.”


That claim is belied by the fact that Israel rules over millions of Palestinians in the occupied territories who can’t vote for the Israeli regime that actually rules their lives.



Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem and Human Rights Watch have stated this year that Israel commits the crime of apartheid in all the territories it controls.

Mark Mellman, the CEO of Democratic Majority for Israel, said just before the primary that Turner is an “implacable foe of Israel and a potential leader of the anti-Israel movement.”

His PAC – political action committee – raised well over $1 million for Brown.

DMFI board member Archie Gottesman received considerable criticism earlier this year when a genocide-promoting tweet of hers calling to “burn” all of Gaza came to light. She retained her board seat with an unconvincing apology.

In Brown’s victory speech, she came across as openly sympathetic to Israeli military might being brought to bear against Palestinians in Gaza.

“When you see a person who has a firecracker that’s been dropped by a drone near the Gaza Strip, and you are within a few feet of a bomb shelter, you can appreciate the vulnerability of a state,” Brown asserted. This is an inversion of the reality of overwhelming Israeli military superiority.

She added: “That has given me the understanding of the importance of the US-Israel relationship. So I thank my Jewish brothers and sisters.” Brown appears here to think that the Jewish community is monolithic and all in support of a US-Israel relationship which for decades has advanced the dispossession and occupation of Palestinians.

She fails to note that in May alone, Israel killed some 260 Palestinians in Gaza, including more than 60 children during 11 days of relentless bombardment of the tightly besieged territory. US military weaponry, which Brown supports for Israel, was employed in that assault.



Brown can also be expected to work against the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement and its efforts to secure freedom and equal rights for Palestinians.



Echoing standard Israel lobby talking points, Brown told Jewish Insider before the primary that “I also oppose the global BDS movement which uses anti-Semitic rhetoric and arguments to weaken, isolate, and delegitimize Israel.” This conflates support for equal rights and the right of return for Palestinian refugees with anti-Jewish bigotry and highlights the profound levels of anti-Palestinian racism within the Democratic Party.

A billboard paid for by Pro-Israel America United takes aim at Nina Turner.

Brown, who claims to support the moribund two-state solution, is an ardent backer of US military aid to Israel. She supports the $3.8 billion in annual US military aid to Israel and opposes “conditioning our aid to Israel for specific results.”

In other words, Israel can carry on with human rights abuses against Palestinians and nevertheless can expect Brown’s vote for ongoing military aid.

Turner’s political future is now uncertain. She was apparently hurt within the district by her strong denunciations of Joe Biden.

A large street billboard within the district, a photo of which was shared with The Electronic Intifada, reminded voters that she had compared voting for Biden to eating half a “bowl of shit.”

That advertisement notes it was paid for by PIA United. Passersby would be unlikely to know without a google search that PIA United is Pro-Israel America United.

Both Pro-Israel America United and DMFI PAC ran ads that raised concerns about Turner unrelated to Israel.

Support for apartheid Israel is now seen as a losing issue with Democratic voters so PACs have largely sought to highlight other issues.
Concession speech

Turner’s concession speech is already drawing attacks due to her reference to the role of “evil money” that “manipulated and maligned this election.”


Turner was likely echoing the widespread disgust at the role of corporate donors and national PACs, which have long been seen as distorting and dictating American politics. In her case, the biggest effort to defeat her came from advocates of an apartheid regime.


However, critics are already using her words to claim she was expressing a specifically anti-Jewish animus as centrist and right-wing Democrats delight in Brown’s victory over Turner.

Unlike centi-billionaire Gates, China shares vaccines, technology with world

https://www.workers.org/2021/08/58302/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=unlike-centi-billionaire-gates-china-shares-vaccines-technology-with-world




By Sara Flounders posted on August 10, 2021


In a stunning announcement Aug. 5, China’s President Xi Jinping informed the First International Forum on COVID-19 Vaccine Cooperation of the country’s donation of 2 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines to developing and poor countries within the next four months. This urgent step builds solidarity and makes vaccines accessible in the developing world.

Vaccines donated by China arrive at Abeid Amani Karume International Airport in Tanzania.

Most significant was China’s message that, through cooperation and sharing of resources, skills and technology, many countries could develop overseas production of China-developed vaccines. Increasing local production capacity will save time, lives and costs of international transportation.

The decision to share technology and help countries produce their own vaccines puts China on a collision course with the World Health Organization. WHO is dominated and significantly funded by the one of the world’s wealthiest individuals through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Gates is committed to protecting patents, even in lifesaving essential medicines. Developing global production capacity is deeply threatening to U.S. corporations.

Teaching to fish

CGTN, a Chinese media source, explained the significance of the Forum transferring technology to developing countries and helping these countries establish domestic production lines. It is the difference between giving a supply of fish and teaching countries to fish. This is the best protection now and in the future, as other possible pandemics develop.

Meeting the challenge is much more complicated than delivering palettes of vaccines on the tarmac. Complex logistical problems of storage, transport and need for skilled medical technicians and administrative personnel must be quickly solved. Raw materials and industrial technology are essential. Beginning concrete planning was the purpose of the Aug. 5 international forum, hosted by China’s State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi, and attended via videoconference by 30 countries.

The U.S. corporate media, only capable of viewing the world from a capitalist perspective of competition, immediately took aim at China’s announcement of 2 billion vaccine doses and questioned its motives. They did not, however, question the capacity of China to accomplish these goals.

U.S. news reports claimed that China’s announcement on global cooperation at the international forum was upstaging President Biden’s announcement of U.S. donations. President Biden had announced Aug. 3 that the U.S. had delivered 110 million COVID-19 vaccine doses around the world.

That is a mere 5% of the 2 billion doses from China. Nevertheless, the Aug. 3 White House press release bragged that the donation “cements the United States as the global leader in COVID-19 vaccine donations,” and that this amount is “more than the donations of all other countries combined and reflects the generosity of the American spirit.”

Biden’s announcement was uncritically reported by U.S. corporate media, without bothering to fact-check this wildly exaggerated declaration on the significance of 110 million doses to 65 countries. China has already distributed 750 million doses to 104 countries and has publicized this widely. The 2 billion doses announced Aug. 5 is in addition to the huge amount already delivered. (Global Times, Aug. 5)

The White House statement, misleading and fraudulent, reflects the U.S. ruling class’ determined refusal to acknowledge China’s accomplishments in battling COVID within China and in helping the world deal with the pandemic.

It is seldom mentioned in the U.S. media that the U.S. still has the largest number of COVID deaths of any country — 631,000 at this writing. A comparison to China’s 4,638 deaths is not included. Now the same numbers game is being played around sharing vaccines with the world.

Protecting patents at all costs

The corporate media distorts and hides facts and figures, because enormous pharmaceutical profits are at stake.

Washington is feeling the global pressure to share resources and vaccines and suspend “intellectual property” (IP) rights on COVID vaccine patents. But the pharmaceutical companies remain determined to protect private patents, a fabulous source of guaranteed profits far into the future. They are threatened by even a temporary interruption of IP protections.

A capitalist government exists to protect the “rights” of corporations to maximum profits. This is considered more sacred than the human right to live. Pfizer and Moderna raised the cost of their vaccines — Pfizer by more than 25%.

With the U.S. government buying tens of millions of doses, there are vast profits to be made. Pfizer spent $3 billion on vaccine research but stands to make $26 billion in vaccine sales in 2021. Pfizer’s research investment was more than covered by $12 billion in government subsidies. (Reuters, May 4)

Big Pharma has used its enormous power to block countries in the Global South from developing alternative vaccines. In October 2020, as the full impact of the global pandemic was being felt, India and South Africa put forth a radical proposal to the World Trade Organization: Everyone should be allowed to manufacture the vaccine without penalty.

The proposal for a patent waiver was rejected at the WTO by Bill Gates and all the wealthier capitalist countries including the United States, the European Union, Britain and Switzerland, countries that are home to major pharmaceutical companies. All these countries enjoyed early access to the vaccine.

Vaccine apartheid

Pharmaceutical companies in the U.S. and in other imperialist countries have made billions in profits during the AIDS scourge, which takes an especially heavy toll in Africa. The Gates and other foundations established by multibillionaires are used to defend monopoly medicine while masquerading as saviors.

Because Gates’ own fortune is built on IP, specifically copyrights and patents associated with Microsoft products, Gates has used a portion of his vast corporate wealth to ensure protection of all patents.

The Gates Foundation is the second largest donor, after the U.S., to the World Health Organization. Gates’ views have an outsized influence. Of course, the U.S., Britain, Germany and the other largest funders are all committed to keeping medical technology in private corporate hands.

They prioritize capitalist ownership first and health care in the formerly colonized world a distant second. Less than 2% of Africa’s 1.3 billion people are fully vaccinated.

This is the dual role of all corporate foundations. Foundations such as Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation keep prices high by purchasing medications and donating them, while protecting patents or IP, along with their reputation. With a great deal of publicity and hype, the Gates Foundation claims to combat polio, malaria and AIDS in Africa, but their handouts do not develop essential health infrastructure.

Increasingly health advocates are focusing on the role of Bill Gates and Big Pharma in entrenching deadly vaccine apartheid. “Gates pushed through a plan that would permit companies to hold exclusive rights to lifesaving medicines. . . . Given the enormous influence Gates has in the global public health world, his vision ultimately won out in the COVAX program — which enshrines monopoly patent rights and relies on the charitable whims of rich countries and pharmaceutical giants to provide vaccines to most of the world.” COVAX deceptively describes its goal as “working for global equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines.” (Wired, May 19)

The early hopes of a cooperative collaboration and information sharing in a united effort against the virus crashed against the capitalist rocks of IP rights and proprietary science.

China’s determination to share vaccine technology is a fundamental challenge to corporate domination of technology.

The differences between two global choices are sharpening. Cooperation and sharing scientific information and technology are the only way forward.

WHISTLEBLOWERS STEP FORWARD WITH NEW COMPLAINTS OF ABUSES AT SITE FOR IMMIGRANT CHILDREN

https://popularresistance.org/whistleblowers-step-forward-with-new-complaints-of-abuses-at-site-for-immigrant-children/




ByGovernment Accountability Project.

August 10, 2021
EDUCATE!


Today, Government Accountability Project, filed its second complaint with federal oversight agencies detailing abuses at the Fort Bliss, Texas Emergency Intake Site (EIS) for unaccompanied immigrant children. Government Accountability Project’s first complaint, dated July 7, 2021, is attached as an exhibit to this second complaint.

The Fort Bliss EIS is run by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS’s) Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR). The children are in the custody of ORR. Fort Bliss is one of several EISs holding them, ostensibly on a temporary basis.

The information disclosed in the second complaint was provided by Arthur Pearlstein and Lauren Reinhold, current career federal civil servants and attorneys who volunteered to support ORR’s work. Mr. Pearlstein was posted to Fort Bliss for two months (between April and June 2021) and Ms. Reinhold one month (May 2021).

Mr. Pearlstein and Ms. Reinhold are whistleblowers represented by Government Accountability Project. Like other Government Accountability whistleblower clients, they were eyewitnesses to daily instances of gross mismanagement specifically endangering public health and safety. This second complaint provides new information about:
Three of the private contractors who were paid close to a billion dollars to staff and operate the Fort Bliss EIS — Servpro, Chenega Corporation and Rapid Deployment Inc.;
Organizational chaos at the Fort Bliss EIS due to the domination of operations by the private contractors, abdication of responsibilities by federal managers, and misallocation and mismanagement of resources;
Poor planning and miscommunication endangering and harming the children due to failures in case management and health care;
The terrible conditions in the airplane-hangar sized dormitory tents housing hundreds of children for weeks or months on end; and
Management’s emphasis on secrecy and only “good news stories, including efforts to keep under wraps that COVID was widespread among children and employees.”

Mr. Pearlstein commented:


“I am speaking out in the interest of accountability and with the hope that the many avoidable failures in the program at Fort Bliss will not be repeated. Gross mismanagement, waste, and abuse of authority by those at the top who insisted on utmost secrecy led to conditions for thousands of children at Fort Bliss that can only be described as constituting mistreatment.”

Ms. Reinhold commented:


“While I am pleased that HHS recruited Federal employees to assist with the influx of unaccompanied children crossing the border, I feel our talents and input were underutilized. It is my hope that ORR will develop a long-term humanitarian plan with adequate contractor oversight to house children in better conditions, and to place them with U.S. sponsors more expeditiously.”

In its second complaint, Government Accountability Project Attorney David Z. Seide wrote:


“The information provided by Mr. Pearlstein and Ms. Reinhold corroborates and goes beyond the reports from our other federal employee whistleblower clients who volunteered to help the unaccompanied children warehoused by ORR at Fort Bliss, and elsewhere. Their information further reveals violations of law, rule and policy, gross mismanagement, gross waste of resources, abuses of authority and substantial and specific dangers to public health and safety.”

Government Accountability Project’s complaints can be found here.

AT A MASSIVE UNION RALLY, THE PROMISE OF A BETTER SOUTH

https://popularresistance.org/at-a-massive-union-rally-the-promise-of-a-better-south/




By Hamilton Nolan,In These Times.

August 10, 2021
RESIST!


Above photo: Hamilton Nolan.
Striking mine workers in Alabama bring together the whole wide world.

To get to the big ballpark in Brookwood, Alabama, you drive down the Miners Memorial Parkway. The road goes by the local headquarters of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA), and close to the Miners Memorial monument, which remembers 13 miners killed in a 2001 explosion. A lot of coal miners work in Brookwood, and a lot have died here. Right now, more than a thousand are on strike there, at the Warrior Met Coal. It sits just off the same road.

On Wednesday morning, a line of buses lumbered down the winding road through the woods, and a line of pickup trucks piled up behind them. All passed the ​“We Are One” UMWA signs lining the road for miles before turning into the ballpark, where the sprawling open grass was dotted with tents and a stage. Entire families, most of them in camouflage UMWA t‑shirts, lugged their folding camping chairs and shade umbrellas out past the low white tornado shelters and down to the grass. The strike at Warrior Met has been going on for four months. But on this day, the rally was on.

Several thousand people showed up for what was billed as the ​“Biggest labor rally in Alabama history,” a claim too good to check. What was certain was that this was not a single rally for a single local of a single union. This was the entire labor movement, showing up to say that they have not forgotten a long and grinding struggle.

After the Pledge of Allegiance, the national anthem, and a reverend’s prayer to ​“change the mindset” of scabs and coal mining company owners — something even God might find difficult — the rally commenced. For hours, a procession of UMWA officials and leaders of other unions cycled across the stage, giving speeches that varied in inspirational quality. Attendees sought to maneuver their seats into the small patches of shadow that moved slowly across the scorching grass. Enormous quantities of bottled water, Krispy Kreme donuts, and popsicles were handed out from supply tents. People chatted, and prayed, and listened to various singers, and were together.

Many unions had sent buses full of supporters from all across the South. There were more than a dozen CWA members from Atlanta who worked for AT&T, decked out in red shirts. There was a gaggle of UAW members. There were Teamsters, and teachers, and government workers, all proudly in their union t‑shirts. There were union officials from Georgia and Kentucky and Tennessee and South Carolina. There were presidents of locals from other states, climbing the stage to present $500 checks to the strike fund. There was an entire tent full of longshoremen wearing custom-made white t‑shirts that said ​“Port workers in solidarity with mine workers.” They had come from Charleston, Jacksonville, and Mobile, Alabama, on a single bus that stopped in each city, collecting the comrades.

In addition to all the union member guests, at least half of the crowd was made up of retired UMWA members and their families, as if to demonstrate the ​“We Are Everywhere” slogan on all the camo shirts. These people also came from all across the country. One 76-year-old former coal miner nicknamed ​“Mouse” had taken a bus the week before from his West Virginia home up to New York City for a protest that the strikers held in front of the Blackrock headquarters in Manhattan; this week, he had taken another bus 18 hours to Brookwood for this rally. Asked why, he jabbed his finger forward and said, with force, ​“It helps my union brothers.”

Brookwood, Alabama is not a convenient place to get to, even if you live in Birmingham. The fact that thousands of people from across the country had clambered into buses for interminable trips to sit at this rally under the sweltering sun, for people they did not know, was remarkable. I spoke to many of these attendees and, to a person, the question of why they had gone to all the trouble to show up was answered as if it didn’t require any explanation at all. ​“Solidarity,” they said. ​“They supported us, so we’re supporting them.” ​“This is what the union’s about.” To take a 30-hour round trip on a bus was, for them, a no-brainer. This is what the union’s about. For one day, this was just common sense. But in the context of the United States of America in 2021, this was a rare sight to behold.

The crowd at the Brookwood rally was multiracial. Not multiracial like a fashion ad, or a painstakingly assembled corporate board, but a large group of Black and white people united for a common purpose. The UMWA miners who are on strike at Warrior Met now are an integrated group, and so their supporters in the community are integrated as well. There were both Black and white people serving as Marshals at the rally, and helping to run it, and speaking from the stage, and sitting in the crowd. The majority of the people from other unions who had shown up in support were Black. The longshoremen were almost all Black, the CWA workers from Atlanta were almost all Black, and on and on.

Many of the UMWA members in attendance, and certainly most of the older retirees, were white, religious, and Republican. The entertainment at the rally was almost all gospel and religious music. Singer after singer appeared between speeches to proclaim the glory of the Blood of Jesus. One retired miner made it a point to tell me, at the end of an interview, ​“I’m a Trump guy.” Across the grass, some of the Black CWA members from Atlanta toted ​“Strike for Black Lives” signs. At no point during the long, hot day did I see a bit of animosity — or, indeed, even a mention of political differences — between the members of the crowd. (The one exception was a single angry interloper who began pushing people and trying to start a fight before being hustled away by a large crowd of miners. I was told that he was a scab worker sent in to try to disrupt the rally. The fact that he walked out in one piece is a testament to the professionalism of the union.)

I am from the South. I was born in the South, I grew up in the South, and my entire family lives in the South. I have never in my life seen a racially and politically integrated crowd of people in the deep South, utterly united for a cause, as I did at this rally. The only things that come close are church events or football games, which I would argue lack the socially redeeming qualities of yesterday’s event. It is possible, down South, to get a racially integrated crowd where everyone agrees politically, but to get thousands of Black and white people whose politics range from strongly pro-Trump to strongly pro-Black Lives Matter together in a single place, in total unity of purpose, with virtually no conflict, and without being the explicit result of trying to assemble such a crowd to satisfy some sort of demographic diversity goals — well, that just doesn’t happen that much, ever.

This is the promise of unions. Not just better wages, or better working conditions, but a better society. Unions offer a frame for human interaction that does not otherwise exist. Our everyday experience in a society that is racially segregated, unequal, and politically polarized tells us that getting young and old and Black and white and left and right all together for something should be extraordinary or impossible; but at a union rally, where everyone’s common interest is plain to see, it becomes natural. It is only because the strength of unions within southern communities has become so rare that the sight of yesterday’s rally was so abnormal. Were there more strong unions, the South could be a very different place.

What the UMWA offers to the people of Brookwood is a vision of the world in which your enemy does not have to be someone of a different race or different political party. For those who believe in the union, there is a much more compelling enemy. It is an enemy they can see every day that they sit out on the picket line, watching cars drive by them, towards the mine. The back of the stage at the rally held a large banner with a picture of working people on it, and a header that read ​“Which Side Are You On?” One side of the banner said ​“UMWA,” and the other side said ​“Scabs.”

As the rally neared its end, a folk singer got up to perform a song he’d written to the tune of Woody Guthrie’s ​“All You Fascists Are Bound to Lose.”

“I’m gonna tell you scabs, we’re gonna win this strike,” he crooned. ​“And I’ll die a union miner, but you’ll be a scab for life.”