thenation--2020-09-30--Too Many Young Voters Are Drowning in Student Debt

This story is published as part of StudentNation ’ s “ Vision 2020 : Election Stories From the Next Generation , ” reports from young journalists that center the concerns of diverse young voters .
In this project , working with Dr. Sherri Williams , we recruited young journalists from different backgrounds to develop story ideas and reporting about their peers ’ concerns ahead of the most important election of our lives .
We ’ ll continue publishing two stories each week over the course of September .
Jonathan Moraga ’ s dream school was American University .
Originally from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ science in the nation ’ s capital .
But he never expected the high cost of living and student loans would push him out of the university .
When the financial stress became overwhelming , he had to transfer to Florida International University , almost 900 miles away from Washington , where the tuition is $ 26,000 less than at American University .
“ Most other students don ’ t have to work or think about student loans .
They just have to think about going to school , ” said 21-year-old Moraga @ @ @ @ @ @ @ disadvantage .
I know a lot of people who graduate and don ’ t find a job after college , and the problems are just amplified when you ’ re a minority.
” Despite the persistence of the student loan debt crisis , young voters are concerned that presidential candidates will once again overlook it as a national crisis—one that frequently prevents students from improving their lives after graduation .
With the constant threat of loan payments looming over them , debt holders have to worry about paying them off rather than focusing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was produced for Student Nation , a section devoted to highlighting campus activism and student movements from students in their own words .
For more Student Nation , check out our archive .
Are you a student with a campus activism story ?
Send questions and pitches to Samantha Schuyler at samantha @ thenation.com .
The Student Nation program is made possible through generous funding from The Puffin Foundation .
Student loan debt is one of the largest forms of debt in the country , with Americans owing a total of $ 1.6 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , according to a March 2019 report from the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System .
Students who graduated in 2019 owed an average of $ 29,900 from private and federal loans , according to data from the US Federal Reserve and the Federal Reserve Bank .
Not only that , but 14 percent of parents in 2019 borrowed an average of $ 37,200 in federal parent plus loans , according to the same data .
Nationwide , almost half of black borrowers defaulted on their loans and 75 percent dropped @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Center for American Progress .
Student loan debt has inevitably become a larger issue for borrowers of color and low-income borrowers , who are hit the hardest .
In Washington , D.C. , alone , the racial disparities have influenced educational attainment .
For example , in Brentwood , one of the poorest neighborhoods in Washington , around 33 percent of its residents obtain a post-secondary degree , 53.4 percent solely obtain a high school diploma , and 13.6 percent don ’ t receive a high school diploma at all .
In Georgetown @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 92 percent of its residents have obtained a post-secondary degree , 6.5 percent have obtained a high school diploma and 0.6 percent have not received a high school diploma , according to a study by Statistical Atlas , which takes data from the US Census Bureau .
And these trends are mirrored in cities across the country .
The reality for many working-class people is that the educational disparities between these neighborhoods are just one example of the racial wealth gap and how access to education is compromised as a result .
Educational @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in which a child is reared .
According to a study by the Urban Institute , growing up in poverty makes it harder for students to complete college , even if students do overcome that hurdle to gain access to the institution in the first place .
Overall , the most susceptible have become low-income students and students of color who incur insurmountable amounts of debt , which take them years to pay off .
Wil Del Pilar , the vice president of higher education policy and practice at the Education Trust Foundation @ @ @ @ @ @ @ don ’ t have a robust community college system “ presents unique obstacles.
” “ Access is directly linked to proximity , ” he said .
“ If there isn ’ t a community college that ’ s close , or an affordable college nearby that ’ s high quality and that provides students with additional resources like transportation costs , low-income students simply won ’ t enroll.
” As a result , students in Washington D.C. are some of the nation ’ s most susceptible to incurring monumental amounts of student debt @ @ @ @ @ @ @ annual tuition increases .
“ Almost every time I talk with students , they ’ re asking about student debt and how that impacts them , ” said Tim Maggio , a financial aid counselor at American University in Washington .
“ If you ’ re a first-generation student , or you don ’ t have a lot of access to understanding higher education , you don ’ t understand all the complexities that come with student debt.
” Mark Goudy , a 34-year-old YouTuber and private contractor , said his lack of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ influenced his decision to take out student loans .
He said he accumulated $ 270,000 in debt , defaulted on two loans , and struggled financially .
“ I would scrub toilets for money .
I couldn ’ t afford a bed , so I slept on my living room floor , ” said Goudy , who attended Ohio University .
“ I struggled a lot , and I wasn ’ t just at a disadvantage because of my loans , but because of my financial standing.
” He said that he wishes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ potential consequences of taking out loans .
But he was always told to “ stay in school and not worry about it.
” Derrick Cooper , the leader of the LA City Wildcats , a youth organization that works with kids from the most vulnerable neighborhoods in Los Angeles , dealt with student loans as a father of two college graduates and as a coach to underprivileged students .
“ It ’ s a very downhill experience because most of them are just not knowledgeable , ” he said .
“ Some are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a living without having to pay for loans .
A few make it and I ’ m proud of them , but most don ’ t because they can ’ t. ” This nationwide student loan debt crisis became a prevalent issue in the 2020 presidential primaries .
Candidates discussed viable solutions .
The nation ’ s students have to decide whether or not to go to college—a decision that could potentially alter how they pursue their academic careers .
The most vulnerable students , however , are inherently left with fewer options @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to go to grad school , ” Goudy said .
“ But because I had to start repaying my loans , I had to start working right away.
” In March , President Trump signed the Coronavirus Aid , Relief and Economic Security Act response to the pandemic , which gave federal student loan borrowers a forbearance and stopped interest loans until September 30 , which in August was extended to December 31 .
Some experts believe measures like these are beneficial in the short term but insufficient long-term solutions to the student @ @ @ @ @ @ @ only applies to federal loans .
This means that students who have Perkins and privately held Federal Family Education Loans still need to make payments , said Del Pilar .
“ This only effectively delays payments and does nothing to decrease student loan debt , ” he said .
Although the nation ’ s capital is home to some of the wealthiest and most powerful individuals in the nation , it has also become the epicenter of economic disparities , drastically impacting students from underprivileged backgrounds .
This is the unfortunate reality for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ just hope that this won ’ t be overlooked forever .
“ This cycle of debt worries me , ” Moraga said .
“ It ’ s another way the system works against minorities and people of color , and I don ’ t think it ’ s fair .
”

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This story is published as part of StudentNation’s “Vision 2020: Election Stories From the Next Generation,” reports from young journalists that center the concerns of diverse young voters. In this project, working with Dr. Sherri Williams, we recruited young journalists from different backgrounds to develop story ideas and reporting about their peers’ concerns ahead of the most important election of our lives. We’ll continue publishing two stories each week over the course of September.
Jonathan Moraga’s dream school was American University. Originally from Miami, Moraga wanted to study political science in the nation’s capital. But he never expected the high cost of living and student loans would push him out of the university.
When the financial stress became overwhelming, he had to transfer to Florida International University, almost 900 miles away from Washington, where the tuition is $26,000 less than at American University. “Most other students don’t have to work or think about student loans. They just have to think about going to school,” said 21-year-old Moraga. “I just felt at a disadvantage. I know a lot of people who graduate and don’t find a job after college, and the problems are just amplified when you’re a minority.”
Despite the persistence of the student loan debt crisis, young voters are concerned that presidential candidates will once again overlook it as a national crisis—one that frequently prevents students from improving their lives after graduation. With the constant threat of loan payments looming over them, debt holders have to worry about paying them off rather than focusing on their socioeconomic mobility. This story was produced for Student Nation, a section devoted to highlighting campus activism and student movements from students in their own words. For more Student Nation, check out our archive. Are you a student with a campus activism story? Send questions and pitches to Samantha Schuyler at [email protected]. The Student Nation program is made possible through generous funding from The Puffin Foundation.
Student loan debt is one of the largest forms of debt in the country, with Americans owing a total of $1.6 trillion in both federal and private loans, according to a March 2019 report from the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System.
Students who graduated in 2019 owed an average of $29,900 from private and federal loans, according to data from the US Federal Reserve and the Federal Reserve Bank. Not only that, but 14 percent of parents in 2019 borrowed an average of $37,200 in federal parent plus loans, according to the same data. Nationwide, almost half of black borrowers defaulted on their loans and 75 percent dropped out of college, according to the Center for American Progress.
Student loan debt has inevitably become a larger issue for borrowers of color and low-income borrowers, who are hit the hardest. In Washington, D.C., alone, the racial disparities have influenced educational attainment. For example, in Brentwood, one of the poorest neighborhoods in Washington, around 33 percent of its residents obtain a post-secondary degree, 53.4 percent solely obtain a high school diploma, and 13.6 percent don’t receive a high school diploma at all. In Georgetown, one of the wealthiest areas, 92 percent of its residents have obtained a post-secondary degree, 6.5 percent have obtained a high school diploma and 0.6 percent have not received a high school diploma, according to a study by Statistical Atlas, which takes data from the US Census Bureau. And these trends are mirrored in cities across the country. Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann Current Issue View our current issue
The reality for many working-class people is that the educational disparities between these neighborhoods are just one example of the racial wealth gap and how access to education is compromised as a result. Educational attainment is largely influenced by the environment in which a child is reared. According to a study by the Urban Institute, growing up in poverty makes it harder for students to complete college, even if students do overcome that hurdle to gain access to the institution in the first place.
Overall, the most susceptible have become low-income students and students of color who incur insurmountable amounts of debt, which take them years to pay off. Wil Del Pilar, the vice president of higher education policy and practice at the Education Trust Foundation, said that cities like Washington that don’t have a robust community college system “presents unique obstacles.”
“Access is directly linked to proximity,” he said. “If there isn’t a community college that’s close, or an affordable college nearby that’s high quality and that provides students with additional resources like transportation costs, low-income students simply won’t enroll.”
As a result, students in Washington D.C. are some of the nation’s most susceptible to incurring monumental amounts of student debt. This has only been exacerbated by annual tuition increases. “Almost every time I talk with students, they’re asking about student debt and how that impacts them,” said Tim Maggio, a financial aid counselor at American University in Washington. “If you’re a first-generation student, or you don’t have a lot of access to understanding higher education, you don’t understand all the complexities that come with student debt.”
Mark Goudy, a 34-year-old YouTuber and private contractor, said his lack of understanding of the costs of higher education influenced his decision to take out student loans. He said he accumulated $270,000 in debt, defaulted on two loans, and struggled financially. “I would scrub toilets for money. I couldn’t afford a bed, so I slept on my living room floor,” said Goudy, who attended Ohio University. “I struggled a lot, and I wasn’t just at a disadvantage because of my loans, but because of my financial standing.” He said that he wishes somebody would have told him of the potential consequences of taking out loans. But he was always told to “stay in school and not worry about it.”
Derrick Cooper, the leader of the LA City Wildcats, a youth organization that works with kids from the most vulnerable neighborhoods in Los Angeles, dealt with student loans as a father of two college graduates and as a coach to underprivileged students. “It’s a very downhill experience because most of them are just not knowledgeable,” he said. “Some are just intimidated about how they would maintain a living without having to pay for loans. A few make it and I’m proud of them, but most don’t because they can’t.”
This nationwide student loan debt crisis became a prevalent issue in the 2020 presidential primaries. Candidates discussed viable solutions. The nation’s students have to decide whether or not to go to college—a decision that could potentially alter how they pursue their academic careers. The most vulnerable students, however, are inherently left with fewer options. “I always had a plan to go to grad school,” Goudy said. “But because I had to start repaying my loans, I had to start working right away.”
In March, President Trump signed the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act response to the pandemic, which gave federal student loan borrowers a forbearance and stopped interest loans until September 30, which in August was extended to December 31.
Some experts believe measures like these are beneficial in the short term but insufficient long-term solutions to the student loan debt crisis. The CARES Act only applies to federal loans. This means that students who have Perkins and privately held Federal Family Education Loans still need to make payments, said Del Pilar. “This only effectively delays payments and does nothing to decrease student loan debt,” he said.
Although the nation’s capital is home to some of the wealthiest and most powerful individuals in the nation, it has also become the epicenter of economic disparities, drastically impacting students from underprivileged backgrounds. This is the unfortunate reality for underprivileged students across the United States—debt holders just hope that this won’t be overlooked forever. “This cycle of debt worries me,” Moraga said. “It’s another way the system works against minorities and people of color, and I don’t think it’s fair.”


thenation--2020-09-30--‘My People Are Being Hunted’

‘My People Are Being Hunted’

hoenix—In 2010 , after the passage of the most punitive anti-immigrant law in the nation , Arizona Senate Bill 1070 , I stood up at a meeting of mostly white community and business leaders and angrily lamented : “ My people are being hunted.
” No one in the room said a word , but I ’ m sure most knew it was true .
The lead sponsor of that infamous “ show us your papers ” bill , then–State Senate President Russell Pearce , the self-described head of the Arizona ’ s Tea Party Republicans , had made it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ families were terrorized and separated or how much it cost the state ’ s economy , which relied heavily on the cheap labor of undocumented immigrants , he was determined to get as many of my immigrant brothers and sisters as possible deported and as soon as possible .
My wife and I are US citizens , but the insidious nature of the legislation hit home when my 7-year-old daughter , near tears , asked me one evening if we were going to be arrested .
I held her and assured her that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I knew tens of thousands of immigrant parents statewide could not say the same .
A lot has changed in 10 years .
Arizona ’ s SB 1070 and the Trump administration ’ s persecution of immigrants and refugees have inspired a wave of grassroots resistance here and nationwide that ’ s helped elect more progressives to Congress and will likely turn Arizona blue in November .
But for the time being at least , my people are still being hunted by federal immigration authorities and complicit local police—and now a deadly coronavirus @ @ @ @ @ @ @ than 42,000 Latinos have died of Covid-19 , perishing at a rate one and a half times that of whites , according to the COVID Tracking Project .
More than 39,000 Black people have died of the coronavirus—at an even worse rate , nearly two and a half times that of whites .
Latinos and Blacks are hospitalized with the virus more than four and a half times times as often as whites , and both communities have been crushed by the pandemic ’ s economic fallout .
Asked at press briefings in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Covid-19 on people of color , Trump called it “ terrible , ” insisted that his administration is “ doing everything in our power to address this challenge , ” and rambled on about how low unemployment rates were for Blacks and Latinos before the pandemic .
Over the past five months , the president has pushed to keep low-wage-earning Latinos in agriculture , the restaurant and hotel industry , and in meatpacking plants nationwide on the job .
‘ We Are Civilization ’ s Anchor .
We Are the Compass for Humanity @ @ @ @ @ @ @ In Maricopa County , which includes Phoenix , about 50 percent of the 141,000-plus Covid cases have been among Latinos .
( We make up 31 percent of the county population . )
In Phoenix , almost every city block of our Latino neighborhoods , could be dotted with shrines for the sick and the dead .
All this comes in a national context , also , of a spike in bias crimes against Latinos in recent years , according to FBI data .
The most heinous example of anti-Latino hate came in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ down 46 people at an El Paso Walmart .
The shooter killed 22 people , almost all Latinos .
( A 23d victim died in April . )
The killer , who confessed , told police he had driven 10 hours from his Dallas suburb to the border to “ kill Mexicans ” and stop “ the Hispanic invasion ” —echoing words President Trump had repeated more than 20 times in the eight months leading up to the shooting .
El Paso left me feeling that Latinos had gone from being hunted to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ scourge was looming just around the corner .
Given Trump ’ s punishing attacks on immigrants , including a policy that separated thousands of migrant children from their parents , a shutdown of all asylum requests by refugees at the US-Mexico border , and the likelihood that the president ’ s woefully negligent response to the pandemic will lead to the deaths of another 80,000 to 90,000 people of color by January , I can ’ t help wondering if Trump ’ s real goal is to ethnically cleanse Latinos and other people @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his repeated refusal to commit to a peaceful transfer of power should he lose the election , I believe Trump is capable of almost anything .
Still , I believe Trump will lose reelection .
His core supporters will stick with him , but most Americans have had their fill of the president ’ s chaos , bullying , and chicanery .
He won ’ t go quietly , and he certainly won ’ t shut up once he ’ s out , but this presidency will end .
And despite all that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ our children , the denigration of our culture , the horrendous death toll wreaked by the virus , I believe the Latino community will emerge stronger than ever from these devastating times .
The community ’ s spirit , resilience , and its more recent momentum in US society is too strong and deeply rooted .
There are now more than 60 million Latinos in the United States , nearly 80 percent of whom are US citizens , with an estimated economic impact of more than $ 2.6 trillion , a figure equal @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
This year , more than 32 million Latinos will be eligible to vote , an increase of about 4 million people since the last election , and grassroots groups have been working feverishly to register hundreds of thousands of them by November .
More importantly , Latinos today are better educated , more politically engaged and influential than ever before .
So , no matter what Trump and many of his followers may think , we ’ re here to stay .
In Arizona , our growing clout helped recall Senator Pearce @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and elect Senator Kirsten Sinema in 2016 .
The state ’ s blue wave , which is being driven in great part by a rising brown tide , will almost certainly help usher in victories in November for Democratic US Senate candidate Mark Kelly , former vice president Joe Biden , and a wave of young Democratic Latino and non-Latino candidates in the state legislature .
I ’ m not a Democrat , but trends like these give me hope , which we all so desperately need , that mi gente , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ being hunted to helping lead this state and , yes , this country out of one of its darkest periods in modern times to better days .
Scenes From a Pandemic is a collaboration between The Nation and Kopkind , a living memorial to radical journalist Andrew Kopkind , who from 1982–94 was the magazine ’ s chief political writer and analyst .
This series of dispatches from Kopkind ’ s far-flung network of participants , advisers , guests , and friends is edited by Nation contributor and Kopkind program director JoAnn Wypijewski @ @ @ @ @ @ @ kopkind.org .

P hoenix—In 2010, after the passage of the most punitive anti-immigrant law in the nation, Arizona Senate Bill 1070, I stood up at a meeting of mostly white community and business leaders and angrily lamented: “My people are being hunted.” No one in the room said a word, but I’m sure most knew it was true.
The lead sponsor of that infamous “show us your papers” bill, then–State Senate President Russell Pearce, the self-described head of the Arizona’s Tea Party Republicans, had made it clear that no matter how many immigrant families were terrorized and separated or how much it cost the state’s economy, which relied heavily on the cheap labor of undocumented immigrants, he was determined to get as many of my immigrant brothers and sisters as possible deported and as soon as possible. My wife and I are US citizens, but the insidious nature of the legislation hit home when my 7-year-old daughter, near tears, asked me one evening if we were going to be arrested. I held her and assured her that was not going to happen, though I knew tens of thousands of immigrant parents statewide could not say the same.
A lot has changed in 10 years. Arizona’s SB 1070 and the Trump administration’s persecution of immigrants and refugees have inspired a wave of grassroots resistance here and nationwide that’s helped elect more progressives to Congress and will likely turn Arizona blue in November. But for the time being at least, my people are still being hunted by federal immigration authorities and complicit local police—and now a deadly coronavirus.
As of this writing, more than 42,000 Latinos have died of Covid-19, perishing at a rate one and a half times that of whites, according to the COVID Tracking Project. More than 39,000 Black people have died of the coronavirus—at an even worse rate, nearly two and a half times that of whites. Latinos and Blacks are hospitalized with the virus more than four and a half times times as often as whites, and both communities have been crushed by the pandemic’s economic fallout. Asked at press briefings in early April about the disproportionate impact of Covid-19 on people of color, Trump called it “terrible,” insisted that his administration is “doing everything in our power to address this challenge,” and rambled on about how low unemployment rates were for Blacks and Latinos before the pandemic. Over the past five months, the president has pushed to keep low-wage-earning Latinos in agriculture, the restaurant and hotel industry, and in meatpacking plants nationwide on the job. Scenes From a Pandemic Untethered, or The Year of Living Virtually Patricia J. Williams The Art of the Meal Mary Lewis Maybe We Shouldn’t Go Back to Normal Bri M.
In Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix, about 50 percent of the 141,000-plus Covid cases have been among Latinos. (We make up 31 percent of the county population.) In Phoenix, almost every city block of our Latino neighborhoods, could be dotted with shrines for the sick and the dead. Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann
All this comes in a national context, also, of a spike in bias crimes against Latinos in recent years, according to FBI data. The most heinous example of anti-Latino hate came in August 2019 when a white supremacist gunned down 46 people at an El Paso Walmart. The shooter killed 22 people, almost all Latinos. (A 23d victim died in April.) The killer, who confessed, told police he had driven 10 hours from his Dallas suburb to the border to “kill Mexicans” and stop “the Hispanic invasion”—echoing words President Trump had repeated more than 20 times in the eight months leading up to the shooting. El Paso left me feeling that Latinos had gone from being hunted to massacred. Little did we know a scourge was looming just around the corner.
Given Trump’s punishing attacks on immigrants, including a policy that separated thousands of migrant children from their parents, a shutdown of all asylum requests by refugees at the US-Mexico border, and the likelihood that the president’s woefully negligent response to the pandemic will lead to the deaths of another 80,000 to 90,000 people of color by January, I can’t help wondering if Trump’s real goal is to ethnically cleanse Latinos and other people of color from this country. After his repeated refusal to commit to a peaceful transfer of power should he lose the election, I believe Trump is capable of almost anything. Current Issue View our current issue
Still, I believe Trump will lose reelection. His core supporters will stick with him, but most Americans have had their fill of the president’s chaos, bullying, and chicanery. He won’t go quietly, and he certainly won’t shut up once he’s out, but this presidency will end. And despite all that’s happened, the caging of our children, the denigration of our culture, the horrendous death toll wreaked by the virus, I believe the Latino community will emerge stronger than ever from these devastating times.
The community’s spirit, resilience, and its more recent momentum in US society is too strong and deeply rooted. There are now more than 60 million Latinos in the United States, nearly 80 percent of whom are US citizens, with an estimated economic impact of more than $2.6 trillion, a figure equal to the GDP of Brazil or Australia. This year, more than 32 million Latinos will be eligible to vote, an increase of about 4 million people since the last election, and grassroots groups have been working feverishly to register hundreds of thousands of them by November. More importantly, Latinos today are better educated, more politically engaged and influential than ever before. So, no matter what Trump and many of his followers may think, we’re here to stay. In Arizona, our growing clout helped recall Senator Pearce, oust the odious Sheriff Joe Arpaio, and elect Senator Kirsten Sinema in 2016. The state’s blue wave, which is being driven in great part by a rising brown tide, will almost certainly help usher in victories in November for Democratic US Senate candidate Mark Kelly, former vice president Joe Biden, and a wave of young Democratic Latino and non-Latino candidates in the state legislature. I’m not a Democrat, but trends like these give me hope, which we all so desperately need, that mi gente, my people, could soon go from being hunted to helping lead this state and, yes, this country out of one of its darkest periods in modern times to better days.
Scenes From a Pandemic is a collaboration between The Nation and Kopkind, a living memorial to radical journalist Andrew Kopkind, who from 1982–94 was the magazine’s chief political writer and analyst. This series of dispatches from Kopkind’s far-flung network of participants, advisers, guests, and friends is edited by Nation contributor and Kopkind program director JoAnn Wypijewski, and appears weekly on thenation.com and kopkind.org.


thenation--2020-09-30--Stephen F. Cohen Kept the Faith

Stephen F. Cohen Kept the Faith

I first reached out to Stephen Cohen because I was losing my mind .
In the spring of 2014 , a war broke out in my homeland of Ukraine .
It was a horrific war in a bitterly divided nation , which turned eastern Ukraine into a bombed-out wasteland .
But that ’ s not how it was portrayed in America .
Because millions of eastern Ukrainians were against the US-backed government , their opinions were inconvenient for the West .
Washington needed a clean story about Ukraine fighting the Kremlin ; as a result , US media avoided reporting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the country .
Twenty-plus million people were written out of the narrative , as if they never existed .
I tried to explain to American friends what was happening , but quickly realized that ultimately , even friends believe what they read in the newspapers , and the newspapers were pushing the Washington line .
Except for Steve Cohen .
Steve was the only major figure in America who insisted on remembering the Russian-speaking Ukrainians who , like my family members , distrusted and hated the new Kiev government .
He spoke of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ government committing war crimes against civilians in eastern Ukraine .
He spoke the truth , regardless of how unwieldy it was .
And so I e-mailed him , asking for guidance as I began my own writing career .
Of course , there were many who clamored for Steve ’ s time , but I had an advantage over others .
Steve and I were both night owls , real night owls , the kind who have afternoon tea at three am .
It was then , when the east coast was sleeping @ @ @ @ @ @ @ friend .
There ’ s a lot to say about Steve .
He was extraordinarily kind , never forgetting that in geopolitics , the ones who have the most to lose aren ’ t strategists but everyday individuals impacted by policy .
He was a consummate teacher , insisting on giving mentees the skills to navigate the world , a real proponent of the Teach a man to fish philosophy .
He had facets and stories and memories ; he lived life with empathy and gusto .
But one thing Steve taught me @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and truth be told , there are others who can describe his life better than I. I ’ ll stick to what I learned during our conversations at three in the morning , which is that , above all else , Stephen F. Cohen was a man of faith .
Steve ’ s insistence on speaking the truth about Ukraine and US-Russia relations drew all sorts of attention .
America was hurtling toward a new cold war with Russia , and Steve… well , from the perspective of Washington ’ s foreign policy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ narrative .
Steve talked about inconvenient things , things like US-backed war criminals and America ’ s own meddling in Russian affairs ; in the process , he himself had become inconvenient .
After all , this wasn ’ t some random blogger .
This was one of America ’ s foremost Russia experts , a tenured professor at Princeton and New York University , someone who didn ’ t just write about history but had dinner with it , had briefed US presidents , and was friends with legends like Mikhail Gorbachev @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of brilliant work ; by 2014 , he was using that clout to throw a wrench in the think tank world .
The DC apparatchiks couldn ’ t discredit Steve ’ s credentials or track record—he ’ d predicted events in Ukraine and elsewhere years before they occurred .
They couldn ’ t intimidate him—he ’ d faced far worse threats , like the KGB .
Instead , they set out to turn him into an America-hating , Putin-loving pariah .
This went beyond an ad hominem campaign .
It was something far @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ironically the Soviets did to dissidents : a relentless crusade to render the target untouchable , a leper without a platform .
The barrage of articles and diatribes hurled at Steve in the national press painted him as not just a dissenter but a supporter of dictators and murderers .
It was a vicious , prolonged assault carried out by think tank toadies , the kind of people who win races by kneecapping the competition .
I ’ d often talk with Steve after a new hatchet job or smear on national television @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hurtful—the only way to not be affected was to not care , and Steve cared .
But I also noticed he was remarkably free of bitterness .
Every time I thought he ’ d snap , he ’ d return the next day to write , discuss , keep fighting .
It took me a couple of years to understand that what kept Steve going was faith in his beloved institutions .
He believed in academia , in scholarship , in discourse , debate , and civility .
He believed in the capacity @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with their world , he believed in Russia , and he always believed in America .
He believed in these things far more than he believed in the power of today ’ s warmongers .
Steve liked movies and would often end a lecture with a movie reference to drive home the thesis .
When I think of him , I think of the ending of The Shawshank Redemption , the line about Andy Dufresne crawling through filth and coming out clean on the other side .
Steve didn ’ t live in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ claim he emerged unscathed .
What he did was come through without bitterness or cynicism .
He refused to turn away from the ugliness , but he didn ’ t allow it to blind him to beauty .
He walked with grace .
And he lost neither his convictions nor his faith .

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I first reached out to Stephen Cohen because I was losing my mind.
In the spring of 2014, a war broke out in my homeland of Ukraine. It was a horrific war in a bitterly divided nation, which turned eastern Ukraine into a bombed-out wasteland. But that’s not how it was portrayed in America. Because millions of eastern Ukrainians were against the US-backed government, their opinions were inconvenient for the West. Washington needed a clean story about Ukraine fighting the Kremlin; as a result, US media avoided reporting about the “wrong” half of the country. Twenty-plus million people were written out of the narrative, as if they never existed.
I tried to explain to American friends what was happening, but quickly realized that ultimately, even friends believe what they read in the newspapers, and the newspapers were pushing the Washington line.
Except for Steve Cohen. Steve was the only major figure in America who insisted on remembering the Russian-speaking Ukrainians who, like my family members, distrusted and hated the new Kiev government. He spoke of neo-Nazi paramilitiaries who fought for the US-backed government committing war crimes against civilians in eastern Ukraine. He spoke the truth, regardless of how unwieldy it was. Related Article Stephen F. Cohen, 1938–2020 Katrina vanden Heuvel
And so I e-mailed him, asking for guidance as I began my own writing career. Of course, there were many who clamored for Steve’s time, but I had an advantage over others. Steve and I were both night owls, real night owls, the kind who have afternoon tea at three am. It was then, when the east coast was sleeping, that he became my mentor and friend.
There’s a lot to say about Steve. He was extraordinarily kind, never forgetting that in geopolitics, the ones who have the most to lose aren’t strategists but everyday individuals impacted by policy. He was a consummate teacher, insisting on giving mentees the skills to navigate the world, a real proponent of the Teach a man to fish philosophy. He had facets and stories and memories; he lived life with empathy and gusto.
But one thing Steve taught me is to stick to my strengths, and truth be told, there are others who can describe his life better than I. I’ll stick to what I learned during our conversations at three in the morning, which is that, above all else, Stephen F. Cohen was a man of faith. Current Issue View our current issue
Steve’s insistence on speaking the truth about Ukraine and US-Russia relations drew all sorts of attention. America was hurtling toward a new cold war with Russia, and Steve… well, from the perspective of Washington’s foreign policy establishment, Steve was fucking up the narrative. Steve talked about inconvenient things, things like US-backed war criminals and America’s own meddling in Russian affairs; in the process, he himself had become inconvenient. Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann
After all, this wasn’t some random blogger. This was one of America’s foremost Russia experts, a tenured professor at Princeton and New York University, someone who didn’t just write about history but had dinner with it, had briefed US presidents, and was friends with legends like Mikhail Gorbachev. Steve had clout earned from decades of brilliant work; by 2014, he was using that clout to throw a wrench in the think tank world.
The DC apparatchiks couldn’t discredit Steve’s credentials or track record—he’d predicted events in Ukraine and elsewhere years before they occurred. They couldn’t intimidate him—he’d faced far worse threats, like the KGB. Instead, they set out to turn him into an America-hating, Putin-loving pariah.
This went beyond an ad hominem campaign. It was something far colder, more sustained, something that ironically the Soviets did to dissidents: a relentless crusade to render the target untouchable, a leper without a platform. The barrage of articles and diatribes hurled at Steve in the national press painted him as not just a dissenter but a supporter of dictators and murderers. It was a vicious, prolonged assault carried out by think tank toadies, the kind of people who win races by kneecapping the competition.
I’d often talk with Steve after a new hatchet job or smear on national television. Of course, the attacks were hurtful—the only way to not be affected was to not care, and Steve cared. But I also noticed he was remarkably free of bitterness. Every time I thought he’d snap, he’d return the next day to write, discuss, keep fighting.
It took me a couple of years to understand that what kept Steve going was faith in his beloved institutions. He believed in academia, in scholarship, in discourse, debate, and civility. He believed in the capacity of everyday people to explore and engage with their world, he believed in Russia, and he always believed in America. He believed in these things far more than he believed in the power of today’s warmongers.
Steve liked movies and would often end a lecture with a movie reference to drive home the thesis. When I think of him, I think of the ending of The Shawshank Redemption, the line about Andy Dufresne crawling through filth and coming out clean on the other side. Steve didn’t live in a movie; I can’t claim he emerged unscathed. What he did was come through without bitterness or cynicism. He refused to turn away from the ugliness, but he didn’t allow it to blind him to beauty. He walked with grace. And he lost neither his convictions nor his faith.


thenation--2020-09-30--White Mob Violence Is Back Thanks to Trump

The white mobs didn ’ t care whom they killed as long as the victims were Black .
They murdered people in public with guns and rocks .
They set fire to houses and slaughtered families trying to escape the flames .
In East St. Louis in July 1917 , white vigilantes lynched Blacks with impunity .
It was the prelude to what civil rights activist James Weldon Johnson would ultimately call Red Summer .
The “ red ” referred to the blood that ran in the streets .
The “ summer ” actually referred to the months from April @ @ @ @ @ @ @ African Americans peaked in this country .
In reality , though , that Red Summer stretched across six long years , beginning in East St. Louis in 1917 and ending with the destruction of the predominantly African American town of Rosewood , Fla. , in 1923 .
During that time , white mobs killed thousands of Blacks in 26 cities , including Chicago , Houston , and Washington .
In 1921 , in a slaughter that has been well documented , white citizens of Tulsa , Oklahoma , destroyed the country ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Wall Street , ” as it was then known ) , burning down more than 1,000 houses as well as churches , schools , and even a hospital .
During this period of violence , the mobs sometimes cooperated with the authorities .
Just as often , however , they ignored the police , even breaking through jail walls with sledgehammers to gain access to Black detainees whom they executed in unspeakable ways .
In Tulsa , for example , that campaign of murder and mayhem began only after the local sheriff refused @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of sexual assault .
Although white America repressed the memories of Red Summer for many decades , that shameful chapter of our history has gained renewed scrutiny in this era of Black Lives Matter .
The Tulsa massacre , for instance , features prominently in the recent Watchmen series on HBO and several documentaries are in the works for its centennial anniversary in 2021 .
Other recent documentaries have chronicled killings that took place in the immediate aftermath of World War I in Elaine , Ark.
, and Knoxville , Tenn .
But @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for another , more ominous reason .
White mobs have once again moved out of the shadows and into the limelight during this Trump moment .
Militia movements and right-wing extremists are starting to turn out in force to intimidate racial justice and anti-Trump demonstrators .
Predominantly white and often explicitly racist , these groups now regularly use social media to threaten their adversaries .
This election season , they ’ re gearing up to defend their president with an astonishing degree of support from Republican Party regulars .
According to a January @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , most Republicans believe “ the traditional American way of life is disappearing so fast that we may have to use force to save it.
” More than 40 percent agree that “ a time will come when patriotic Americans have to take the law into their own hands.
” In a recent essay on his survey ’ s findings , Bartels concludes that ethnic antagonism “ has a substantial negative effect on Republicans ’ commitment to democracy.
” As the 2020 election nears , that party is also desperately trying to flip @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their mobs ” and “ Antifa terrorists ” to drive its base to the polls .
“ We have a Marxist mob perpetrate historic levels of violence & disorder in major American cities , ” tweeted Florida Senator Marco Rubio in response to the Democratic National Convention in August .
Not to be outdone , the president promptly said , “ I ’ m the only thing standing between the American dream and total anarchy , madness , and chaos.
” Of course , this country has no such Marxist mobs .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ demonstrated history of violence and the guns to back up their threats congregate on the far right .
The white supremacist Atomwaffen Division , for instance , has been linked to at least five killings since 2017 .
In late May and early June , members of the far-right Boogaloo Bois conducted two ambushes of police officers and security personnel , killing two of them and injuring three more .
Over the summer , as far-right organizations spread the meme “ All Lives Splatter ” around the internet , dozens of right-wingers drove @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Black Lives Matter protesters .
The prospect of far-right vigilantes or “ militias ” heading into the streets to contest the results of the November election has even mainstream institutions worried .
“ Right-wing extremists perpetrated two thirds of the attacks and plots in the United States in 2019 and over 90 percent between January 1 and May 8 , 2020 , ” reports the centrist think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies .
“ If President Trump loses the election , some extremists may use violence because they believe—however incorrectly—that there @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Democratic candidate Joe Biden will undermine their extremist objectives.
” As the violence of Red Summer demonstrated , such acts were once a mainstay of American life .
Indeed , the not-so-hidden history of this country has featured periodic explosions of mob violence .
Racial justice activists rightly call for the radical reform of police departments .
As November approaches , however , uniformed representatives of the state are hardly the only perpetrators of racist violence .
Beware the white mobs , militias , and posses that are desperate to establish their own @ @ @ @ @ @ @ paints a picture of lawlessness sweeping through the United States , he ’ s effectively accusing the institutions of government of not doing their jobs .
In a September 2 memo , the Trump administration laid out its charges : “ For the past few months , several State and local governments have contributed to the violence and destruction in their jurisdictions by failing to enforce the law , disempowering and significantly defunding their police departments , and refusing to accept offers of Federal law enforcement assistance.
” As president , Donald Trump @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , not the more than 200,000 Covid-19 deaths in the United States , not the pandemic-induced economic collapse , and certainly not the racial injustices that prompted this summer ’ s wave of protests .
Simultaneously above the law and outside it , the president consistently portrays himself as a populist leader who must battle the elite and its “ deep state.
” With conspiracy-tinged tirades about Democrat-run cities failing to enforce the law , he has already symbolically put himself at the head of a mob—for this is just how such groups @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The right-wing racists who currently bear arms in defense of the president are part of a long tradition of Americans resorting to vigilantism when they believe the law is not protecting their interests .
Whether it was the displacement and massacre of Native Americans , the horrors that slave owners inflicted on African Americans , the wave of lynching that followed Reconstruction , the bloodletting of Red Summer around World War I , the murders conducted by the Ku Klux Klan and other extremist organizations , or even everyday resistance to federal @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Americans have repeatedly taken the law into their own hands on behalf of white supremacy .
To be sure , mobs are hardly responsible for all the racist ills of this country .
America has always been a place of institutional racism and violence .
Slavery , after all , was legal until 1865 .
The US government and its military did the bulk of the dispossessing of Native Americans .
Police departments cooperated early on with the Ku Klux Klan and today ’ s police officers continue to kill a disproportionate number @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cooperated with state institutions on the basis of shared racism .
But they have also stood at the ready to enforce the dictates of white supremacy even when the police and other guardians of order treat everyone equally before the law .
The mob has occupied an unusually prominent place in our history because Americans have cultivated a unique hostility toward the state and its institutions that goes back to the early years of the Republic .
As historian Michael Pfeifer notes in his groundbreaking book , The Roots of Rough Justice , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Revolution and the subsequent lack of a strong , centralized state gave rise to mob violence that gathered force before the Civil War .
He writes , “ Antebellum advocates of vigilantism in the Midwest , South , and West drew on Anglo-American and American revolutionary traditions of community violence that suggested that citizens might reclaim the functions of government when legal institutions could not provide sufficient protections to persons or their property.
” Those mobs didn ’ t necessarily think of themselves as antidemocratic .
Rather , they imagined that they were @ @ @ @ @ @ @ out , many of the vigilante outfits that targeted minorities practiced democratic procedures of a sort .
Some adopted bylaws and even elected their own leaders .
They held mock trials and votes on what punishments to mete out : hanging or burning alive .
Such mobs functioned both as a parallel military and , to a certain extent , a parallel state .
The two , in fact , went hand in hand .
German sociologist Max Weber famously defined the state as possessing a monopoly on the legitimate use of physical @ @ @ @ @ @ @ tradition .
In the United States , particularly during its first 150 years , the state only aspired to possess such a monopoly .
Instead , a rough form of frontier justice often prevailed .
Before and just after the American Revolution , even whites were its targets , but increasingly its victims were people of color .
Slave owners , slave patrols , and ad hoc mobs dispensed justice throughout antebellum America and the tradition of “ Judge Lynch ” continued long after the abolition of slavery .
The pushing of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s killing of Native Americans but also extrajudicial violence by bands of settlers .
Historian Benjamin Madley estimates that the Native population in California declined by more than 80 percent between 1846 and 1873 , with as many as 16,000 killings in 370-plus massacres .
This “ winning ” of the West also involved the widespread lynching of Latinos .
Mobs were able to dispense frontier justice not only thanks to a strong libertarian tradition and a weak state , but also because of the widespread availability of guns .
Coming out @ @ @ @ @ @ @ developed a distinct gun culture sustained by a surge in firearm production .
Gun prices fell and so guns fell into the hands of more and more citizens .
Mobs used firearms in the infamous Draft Riot in New York in 1863 , which ended up targeting the city ’ s Black community , and in New Orleans in 1866 when enraged whites attacked a meeting of Republicans determined to extend civil rights protections to African Americans .
In their drive westward , settlers favored Winchester rifles with magazines that could fire 15 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ over the people they were displacing .
Early gun control laws seldom prevented whites from acquiring firearms because they were mainly designed to keep guns out of the hands of Blacks and other racial minorities .
Even today , widespread gun ownership distinguishes the United States from every other country .
Approximately 40 percent of American households own one or more firearms , a figure that has remained remarkably consistent for the last 50 years .
If you look at guns per capita , the United States ranks number one in the world @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The next country on the list , war-torn Yemen , comes in a distant second with 52 per hundred .
With more guns than people within its borders , it ’ s no wonder that the federal government has often struggled to maintain its monopoly over the legitimate use of physical force .
Gun enthusiasts have erroneously enlisted the Constitution to justify this extreme democracy of firepower .
To guard against tyrannical federal behavior , the Second Amendment of the Constitution preserved the right of state militias to bear arms .
However , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ campaigned for years to reinterpret that amendment as giving any individual the right to bear arms .
That has , in turn , provided ammunition for both the “ castle doctrine ” ( the right to use armed force to defend one ’ s own home ) and “ stand your ground ” laws ( the right to use force in “ self-defense ” ) .
Armed extremist groups now imagine themselves as nothing less than the Second Amendment ’ s “ well-regulated Militia ” with a constitutionally given “ right ” to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ federal government ( or anyone else they disapprove of ) .
Improbably enough , for the last four years , the head of the federal government has become one of their chief supporters .
Long before becoming president , Donald Trump was already acting as if he were the head of a lynch mob .
In 1989 , he published full-page ads in The New York Times and three other local papers calling for New York City to reinstate the death penalty in response to a brutal gang rape in Central Park .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ ruled by the law of the streets ” and that “ muggers and murderers…should be forced to suffer and , when they kill , they should be executed for their crimes.
” It was language distinctly reminiscent of white mobs bitter about the failure of local law enforcement to execute Blacks accused of crimes .
Like many of their predecessors , the accused Black and Latino teenagers were , in the end , found to be quite innocent of the crime .
After a long legal struggle , the Central Park Five @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ) were released from prison .
Trump has never apologized for his campaign to kill innocent people .
When he ran for president , he quickly moved beyond mere “ law and order ” rhetoric .
In his 2016 presidential campaign , Trump deliberately cultivated a following among armed extremists .
At a rally in North Carolina , for instance , he warned of what might happen to the Supreme Court if Hillary Clinton were to win .
“ If she gets to pick her judges , nothing you can do , folks @ @ @ @ @ @ @ added in his typically confused and elliptical manner of speaking , “ Although the Second Amendment people , maybe there is .
I don ’ t know.
” He was , in other words , suggesting that followers with guns could do something about Clinton ’ s choices by shooting her or her judicial picks .
Throughout that campaign season , he regularly retweeted white supremacist claims and memes .
At the time , it was estimated that more than 60 percent of the accounts he was retweeting had links to white supremacists @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his supporters to get “ rough ” with protesters .
As president , he ’ s continued to side with the mob .
He infamously refused to denounce neo-Nazis gathering in Charlottesville in August 2017 , applauded the armed demonstrators who demanded the reopening of the economy in the pandemic spring of 2020 , and defended 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse after he killed two Black Lives Matter protesters in Kenosha , Wis. , in August .
Trump has stood up for the Confederate flag , Confederate statues , and keeping the names of Confederate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a recent speech denouncing school curricula that teach about slavery and other unsavory aspects of our history , he pledged to erect a statue of a slave owner in a project he ’ s been promoting—building a National Garden of American Heroes park .
The current administration has cultivated direct links to white nationalists through disgraced figures like Steve Bannon and Sebastian Gorka , as well as current advisers like Stephen Miller .
In his reelection bid , Trump pointedly held his first pandemic rally in Tulsa , Okla. , where he excoriated @ @ @ @ @ @ @ your guns through the repeal of your Second Amendment ” and “ left-wing radicals [ who ] burn down buildings , loot businesses , destroy private property , injure hundreds of dedicated police officers.
” In a literal whitewashing of history , he made no mention of the white mobs that had looted businesses and destroyed property in that very city in 1921 .
Trump ’ s exhortations to his followers over the heads of state and local officials appeal to the mob belief that citizens must reclaim the functions of government , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ explicitly embrace that history .
The “ Three Percenters , ” a militia movement that emerged in 2008 after the election of Barack Obama , purports to protect Americans from tyrannical government .
Their name derives from the inaccurate belief that only 3 percent of Americans took up arms to fight the British empire in the 18th century .
Of course , less than 3 percent of Americans are now members of such militias and white nationalist movements , but their numbers are on the rise .
White nationalist groups increased from 100 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The several hundred militia groups now in existence probably have a total of 15,000 to 20,000 members , including an increasing number of veterans with combat experience .
Far from a homogeneous force , some are focused on patrolling the southern border and targeting the undocumented .
Others are obsessed with resisting the federal government , even in a few cases opposing Trump ’ s various power grabs .
West Virginia University professor John Temple argues , in fact , that not all right-wing militias hold extremist views .
“ I have listened @ @ @ @ @ @ @ conversations that didn ’ t sound all that different from what you would hear during a typical evening on Fox News , ” he writes .
“ Many seemed to have joined the cause for social reasons , or because they liked guns , or because they wanted to be part of something they saw as historic and grandiose—not because their views were far more radical than those of typical right-leaning Americans.
” This is not exactly reassuring , since the politics of right-leaning , Fox News–watching Americans have grown more extreme .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ by Larry Bartels prepared to take the law into their own hands , Trump has nearly succeeded in transforming his party into a mob of vigilantes .
Don ’ t be fooled into thinking that the president is a law-and-order candidate .
He flourishes in chaos and routinely flouts the law .
By siding with right-wing militias and their ilk , he daily undermines the state ’ s monopoly on legitimate violence .
The debate over defunding the police must be seen in this context .
In a country awash in guns and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ flirting with mob violence , getting rid of police departments would be akin to jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire of uncontained extremism .
Sure , local law enforcement needs major reforms , massive civic oversight , and right-sized budgets .
Police departments must be purged of white nationalists and neo-Nazis .
The Pentagon has to stop supplying the cops with military-grade weaponry .
But remember : The police can be reformed .
What was once an all-white force now better reflects America ’ s diversity .
The mob @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to reforms or any oversight whatsoever .
This is no time to permit the return of frontier justice administered by white mobs and a lawless president , especially with a critical election looming .
Mob violence has often accompanied elections in the past , with rival factions fighting over the results , as in the street battles of 1874 in New Orleans between Republican integrationists and racist Democrats .
Like 19th century Louisiana , the struggle this November is not just about Democrats versus Republicans .
It ’ s about the rule of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is not going to give up its hold on power without a fight .
If you thought you ’ d seen real American carnage in Trump ’ s four years in office , prepare yourself for the chaotic aftermath of the November election .
The mob is itching to take the law into its own hands one more time on behalf of its very own mobster in chief .

EDITOR’S NOTE: This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To stay on top of important articles like these, sign up to receive the latest updates from TomDispatch.
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The white mobs didn’t care whom they killed as long as the victims were Black. They murdered people in public with guns and rocks. They set fire to houses and slaughtered families trying to escape the flames. In East St. Louis in July 1917, white vigilantes lynched Blacks with impunity.
It was the prelude to what civil rights activist James Weldon Johnson would ultimately call Red Summer. The “red” referred to the blood that ran in the streets. The “summer” actually referred to the months from April to October 1919, when violence against African Americans peaked in this country.
In reality, though, that Red Summer stretched across six long years, beginning in East St. Louis in 1917 and ending with the destruction of the predominantly African American town of Rosewood, Fla., in 1923. During that time, white mobs killed thousands of Blacks in 26 cities, including Chicago, Houston, and Washington. In 1921, in a slaughter that has been well documented, white citizens of Tulsa, Oklahoma, destroyed the country’s wealthiest African American community (“Black Wall Street,” as it was then known), burning down more than 1,000 houses as well as churches, schools, and even a hospital.
During this period of violence, the mobs sometimes cooperated with the authorities. Just as often, however, they ignored the police, even breaking through jail walls with sledgehammers to gain access to Black detainees whom they executed in unspeakable ways. In Tulsa, for example, that campaign of murder and mayhem began only after the local sheriff refused to hand over a Black teenager accused of sexual assault.
Although white America repressed the memories of Red Summer for many decades, that shameful chapter of our history has gained renewed scrutiny in this era of Black Lives Matter. The Tulsa massacre, for instance, features prominently in the recent Watchmen series on HBO and several documentaries are in the works for its centennial anniversary in 2021. Other recent documentaries have chronicled killings that took place in the immediate aftermath of World War I in Elaine, Ark., and Knoxville, Tenn. Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann
But memories of that Red Summer are resurfacing for another, more ominous reason.
White mobs have once again moved out of the shadows and into the limelight during this Trump moment. Militia movements and right-wing extremists are starting to turn out in force to intimidate racial justice and anti-Trump demonstrators. Predominantly white and often explicitly racist, these groups now regularly use social media to threaten their adversaries. This election season, they’re gearing up to defend their president with an astonishing degree of support from Republican Party regulars. Current Issue View our current issue
According to a January 2020 survey by political scientist Larry Bartels, most Republicans believe “the traditional American way of life is disappearing so fast that we may have to use force to save it.” More than 40 percent agree that “a time will come when patriotic Americans have to take the law into their own hands.” In a recent essay on his survey’s findings, Bartels concludes that ethnic antagonism “has a substantial negative effect on Republicans’ commitment to democracy.”
As the 2020 election nears, that party is also desperately trying to flip the script by using fear of “their mobs” and “Antifa terrorists” to drive its base to the polls. “We have a Marxist mob perpetrate historic levels of violence & disorder in major American cities,”tweeted Florida Senator Marco Rubio in response to the Democratic National Convention in August. Not to be outdone, the president promptly said, “I’m the only thing standing between the American dream and total anarchy, madness, and chaos.”
Of course, this country has no such Marxist mobs. The only real groups of vigilantes with a demonstrated history of violence and the guns to back up their threats congregate on the far right. The white supremacist Atomwaffen Division, for instance, has been linked to at least five killings since 2017. In late May and early June, members of the far-right Boogaloo Bois conducted two ambushes of police officers and security personnel, killing two of them and injuring three more. Over the summer, as far-right organizations spread the meme “All Lives Splatter” around the internet, dozens of right-wingers drove vehicles of every sort into crowds of Black Lives Matter protesters.
The prospect of far-right vigilantes or “militias” heading into the streets to contest the results of the November election has even mainstream institutions worried. “Right-wing extremists perpetrated two thirds of the attacks and plots in the United States in 2019 and over 90 percent between January 1 and May 8, 2020,”reports the centrist think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies. “If President Trump loses the election, some extremists may use violence because they believe—however incorrectly—that there was fraud or that the election of Democratic candidate Joe Biden will undermine their extremist objectives.”
As the violence of Red Summer demonstrated, such acts were once a mainstay of American life. Indeed, the not-so-hidden history of this country has featured periodic explosions of mob violence. Racial justice activists rightly call for the radical reform of police departments. As November approaches, however, uniformed representatives of the state are hardly the only perpetrators of racist violence. Beware the white mobs, militias, and posses that are desperate to establish their own brand of justice.
Mob History
When Donald Trump paints a picture of lawlessness sweeping through the United States, he’s effectively accusing the institutions of government of not doing their jobs. In a September 2 memo, the Trump administration laid out its charges: “For the past few months, several State and local governments have contributed to the violence and destruction in their jurisdictions by failing to enforce the law, disempowering and significantly defunding their police departments, and refusing to accept offers of Federal law enforcement assistance.”
As president, Donald Trump has refused to take responsibility for anything, not the more than 200,000 Covid-19 deaths in the United States, not the pandemic-induced economic collapse, and certainly not the racial injustices that prompted this summer’s wave of protests. Simultaneously above the law and outside it, the president consistently portrays himself as a populist leader who must battle the elite and its “deep state.” With conspiracy-tinged tirades about Democrat-run cities failing to enforce the law, he has already symbolically put himself at the head of a mob—for this is just how such groups justified their extra-legal actions throughout our history.
The right-wing racists who currently bear arms in defense of the president are part of a long tradition of Americans resorting to vigilantism when they believe the law is not protecting their interests. Whether it was the displacement and massacre of Native Americans, the horrors that slave owners inflicted on African Americans, the wave of lynching that followed Reconstruction, the bloodletting of Red Summer around World War I, the murders conducted by the Ku Klux Klan and other extremist organizations, or even everyday resistance to federal policies like school desegregation, gangs of Americans have repeatedly taken the law into their own hands on behalf of white supremacy.
To be sure, mobs are hardly responsible for all the racist ills of this country. America has always been a place of institutional racism and violence. Slavery, after all, was legal until 1865. The US government and its military did the bulk of the dispossessing of Native Americans. Police departments cooperated early on with the Ku Klux Klan and today’s police officers continue to kill a disproportionate number of African Americans. Mobs have eagerly cooperated with state institutions on the basis of shared racism. But they have also stood at the ready to enforce the dictates of white supremacy even when the police and other guardians of order treat everyone equally before the law.
The mob has occupied an unusually prominent place in our history because Americans have cultivated a unique hostility toward the state and its institutions that goes back to the early years of the Republic. As historian Michael Pfeifer notes in his groundbreaking book, The Roots of Rough Justice, the violent libertarianism associated with the American Revolution and the subsequent lack of a strong, centralized state gave rise to mob violence that gathered force before the Civil War. He writes, “Antebellum advocates of vigilantism in the Midwest, South, and West drew on Anglo-American and American revolutionary traditions of community violence that suggested that citizens might reclaim the functions of government when legal institutions could not provide sufficient protections to persons or their property.”
Those mobs didn’t necessarily think of themselves as antidemocratic. Rather, they imagined that they were improving on democracy. As Pfeifer points out, many of the vigilante outfits that targeted minorities practiced democratic procedures of a sort. Some adopted bylaws and even elected their own leaders. They held mock trials and votes on what punishments to mete out: hanging or burning alive.
Such mobs functioned both as a parallel military and, to a certain extent, a parallel state.
The two, in fact, went hand in hand. German sociologist Max Weber famously defined the state as possessing a monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force, but that was the German tradition. In the United States, particularly during its first 150 years, the state only aspired to possess such a monopoly.
Instead, a rough form of frontier justice often prevailed. Before and just after the American Revolution, even whites were its targets, but increasingly its victims were people of color. Slave owners, slave patrols, and ad hoc mobs dispensed justice throughout antebellum America and the tradition of “Judge Lynch” continued long after the abolition of slavery. The pushing of the frontier westward involved not only the Army’s killing of Native Americans but also extrajudicial violence by bands of settlers. Historian Benjamin Madley estimates that the Native population in California declined by more than 80 percent between 1846 and 1873, with as many as 16,000 killings in 370-plus massacres. This “winning” of the West also involved the widespread lynching of Latinos.
The “Right” to Bear Arms
Mobs were able to dispense frontier justice not only thanks to a strong libertarian tradition and a weak state, but also because of the widespread availability of guns. Coming out of the Civil War, this country developed a distinct gun culture sustained by a surge in firearm production. Gun prices fell and so guns fell into the hands of more and more citizens.
Mobs used firearms in the infamous Draft Riot in New York in 1863, which ended up targeting the city’s Black community, and in New Orleans in 1866 when enraged whites attacked a meeting of Republicans determined to extend civil rights protections to African Americans. In their drive westward, settlers favored Winchester rifles with magazines that could fire 15 rounds, giving them a staggering advantage over the people they were displacing. Early gun control laws seldom prevented whites from acquiring firearms because they were mainly designed to keep guns out of the hands of Blacks and other racial minorities.
Even today, widespread gun ownership distinguishes the United States from every other country. Approximately 40 percent of American households own one or more firearms, a figure that has remained remarkably consistent for the last 50 years. If you look at guns per capita, the United States ranks number one in the world at 120 firearms per 100 civilians. The next country on the list, war-torn Yemen, comes in a distant second with 52 per hundred. With more guns than people within its borders, it’s no wonder that the federal government has often struggled to maintain its monopoly over the legitimate use of physical force.
Gun enthusiasts have erroneously enlisted the Constitution to justify this extreme democracy of firepower. To guard against tyrannical federal behavior, the Second Amendment of the Constitution preserved the right of state militias to bear arms. However, organizations like the National Rifle Association have campaigned for years to reinterpret that amendment as giving any individual the right to bear arms.
That has, in turn, provided ammunition for both the “castle doctrine” (the right to use armed force to defend one’s own home) and “stand your ground” laws (the right to use force in “self-defense”). Armed extremist groups now imagine themselves as nothing less than the Second Amendment’s “well-regulated Militia” with a constitutionally given “right” to own weapons and defend themselves against the federal government (or anyone else they disapprove of).
Improbably enough, for the last four years, the head of the federal government has become one of their chief supporters.
Donald Trump: Leader of the Pack
Long before becoming president, Donald Trump was already acting as if he were the head of a lynch mob. In 1989, he published full-page ads in The New York Times and three other local papers calling for New York City to reinstate the death penalty in response to a brutal gang rape in Central Park. He swore that the city was then “ruled by the law of the streets” and that “muggers and murderers…should be forced to suffer and, when they kill, they should be executed for their crimes.”
It was language distinctly reminiscent of white mobs bitter about the failure of local law enforcement to execute Blacks accused of crimes. Like many of their predecessors, the accused Black and Latino teenagers were, in the end, found to be quite innocent of the crime. After a long legal struggle, the Central Park Five (as they came to be known) were released from prison. Trump has never apologized for his campaign to kill innocent people.
When he ran for president, he quickly moved beyond mere “law and order” rhetoric. In his 2016 presidential campaign, Trump deliberately cultivated a following among armed extremists. At a rally in North Carolina, for instance, he warned of what might happen to the Supreme Court if Hillary Clinton were to win.
“If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks,” he lamented. Then he added in his typically confused and elliptical manner of speaking, “Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is. I don’t know.” He was, in other words, suggesting that followers with guns could do something about Clinton’s choices by shooting her or her judicial picks.
Throughout that campaign season, he regularly retweeted white supremacist claims and memes. At the time, it was estimated that more than 60 percent of the accounts he was retweeting had links to white supremacists. At his rallies, he encouraged his supporters to get “rough” with protesters.
As president, he’s continued to side with the mob. He infamously refused to denounce neo-Nazis gathering in Charlottesville in August 2017, applauded the armed demonstrators who demanded the reopening of the economy in the pandemic spring of 2020, and defended 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse after he killed two Black Lives Matter protesters in Kenosha, Wis., in August.
Trump has stood up for the Confederate flag, Confederate statues, and keeping the names of Confederate generals on US military bases. In a recent speech denouncing school curricula that teach about slavery and other unsavory aspects of our history, he pledged to erect a statue of a slave owner in a project he’s been promoting—building a National Garden of American Heroes park. The current administration has cultivated direct links to white nationalists through disgraced figures like Steve Bannon and Sebastian Gorka, as well as current advisers like Stephen Miller.
In his reelection bid, Trump pointedly held his first pandemic rally in Tulsa, Okla., where he excoriated Democrats who “want to take away your guns through the repeal of your Second Amendment” and “left-wing radicals [who] burn down buildings, loot businesses, destroy private property, injure hundreds of dedicated police officers.” In a literal whitewashing of history, he made no mention of the white mobs that had looted businesses and destroyed property in that very city in 1921.
Trump’s exhortations to his followers over the heads of state and local officials appeal to the mob belief that citizens must reclaim the functions of government, if necessary through force. Right-wing militias explicitly embrace that history. The “Three Percenters,” a militia movement that emerged in 2008 after the election of Barack Obama, purports to protect Americans from tyrannical government. Their name derives from the inaccurate belief that only 3 percent of Americans took up arms to fight the British empire in the 18th century.
Of course, less than 3 percent of Americans are now members of such militias and white nationalist movements, but their numbers are on the rise. White nationalist groups increased from 100 in 2017 to 155 in 2019. The several hundred militia groups now in existence probably have a total of 15,000 to 20,000 members, including an increasing number of veterans with combat experience. Far from a homogeneous force, some are focused on patrolling the southern border and targeting the undocumented. Others are obsessed with resisting the federal government, even in a few cases opposing Trump’s various power grabs.
West Virginia University professor John Temple argues, in fact, that not all right-wing militias hold extremist views. “I have listened to many hours of ‘patriot’ conversations that didn’t sound all that different from what you would hear during a typical evening on Fox News,” he writes. “Many seemed to have joined the cause for social reasons, or because they liked guns, or because they wanted to be part of something they saw as historic and grandiose—not because their views were far more radical than those of typical right-leaning Americans.”
This is not exactly reassuring, since the politics of right-leaning, Fox News–watching Americans have grown more extreme. With nearly half of the Republicans surveyed by Larry Bartels prepared to take the law into their own hands, Trump has nearly succeeded in transforming his party into a mob of vigilantes.
Don’t be fooled into thinking that the president is a law-and-order candidate. He flourishes in chaos and routinely flouts the law. By siding with right-wing militias and their ilk, he daily undermines the state’s monopoly on legitimate violence.
The debate over defunding the police must be seen in this context. In a country awash in guns and grassroots racism, with a major party flirting with mob violence, getting rid of police departments would be akin to jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire of uncontained extremism. Sure, local law enforcement needs major reforms, massive civic oversight, and right-sized budgets. Police departments must be purged of white nationalists and neo-Nazis. The Pentagon has to stop supplying the cops with military-grade weaponry.
But remember: The police can be reformed. What was once an all-white force now better reflects America’s diversity. The mob, by definition, is not subject to reforms or any oversight whatsoever.
This is no time to permit the return of frontier justice administered by white mobs and a lawless president, especially with a critical election looming. Mob violence has often accompanied elections in the past, with rival factions fighting over the results, as in the street battles of 1874 in New Orleans between Republican integrationists and racist Democrats. Like 19th century Louisiana, the struggle this November is not just about Democrats versus Republicans. It’s about the rule of law versus racist vigilantism.
White supremacy is not going to give up its hold on power without a fight. If you thought you’d seen real American carnage in Trump’s four years in office, prepare yourself for the chaotic aftermath of the November election. The mob is itching to take the law into its own hands one more time on behalf of its very own mobster in chief.