thenation--2020-07-02--Congress Could Rubber-Stamp a Defense Spending Spree

The annual US defense budget has never been crafted through a particularly transparent process .
Now , a global pandemic has taken the yearly passage of the National Defense Authorization Act ( NDAA ) from merely murky to downright opaque .
Normally characterized by late-night sessions of debate and hundreds of offered amendments , the passage of the defense bill is often deemed a bipartisan effort .
However , updated processes in the House and Senate to encourage social distancing during the Covid-19 pandemic—such as only allowing members to vote in shifts , with thorough cleanings between groups—threaten to severely @ @ @ @ @ @ @ comes to the House floor later this month .
That puts us in danger of a defense spending spree rubber-stamped by Congress .
And this year ’ s version of the NDAA—for which the Trump administration has proposed a budget of $ 740.5 billion—is poised to benefit one party more than any other : the arms industry and its lobbyists , who are seeking to cash in while overriding the opinions of the American public on key national security issues .
The Trump administration ’ s quest for military dominance and its campaigns @ @ @ @ @ @ @ provoke regime change in Iran—stand to cost taxpayers tens of billions in weapons modernization costs this year alone , for both nuclear and conventional systems .
Of particular concern is the cost of building new Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles ( ICBMs ) .
Former secretary of defense William J. Perry has described ICBMs as “ some of the most dangerous weapons in the world ” ; if the president were to receive warning of a potential attack—even one that could be a false alarm—he would only have a matter of minutes to decide whether @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the chances of an accidental nuclear war .
For both the 2020 NDAA and this year ’ s fiscal year 2021 budget , representatives suggested amendments that would require the Pentagon to investigate whether a new ICBM were needed at all .
In both years , the amendments were defeated in the House by a solid block of Republicans and a significant number of Democrats—in part thanks to lobbying by defense tech company Northrop Grumman , which stands to make billions building the missiles .
Northrop Grumman is currently on course to receive @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ICBM , which could boost the missile ’ s cost beyond the current estimates of $ 85 billion to $ 150 billion .
Without firm congressional action , the Pentagon ’ s multi-decade nuclear weapons buildup may proceed unchallenged , or even increase in cost .
Some already estimate that spending could add up to as much as $ 2 trillion over the next 30 years .
Marshall Billingslea , the special presidential envoy for arms control , boasted in May that the United States knows how “ to spend the adversary into @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that he was being sincere .
The real question is whether the American people will suffer the same oblivion .
In the Senate , adjustments to the already misguided defense budget requested by the Trump administration underscore the dysfunctional character of the congressional budget process .
One such adjustment is an increase of $ 50 million for biological threat reduction , passed by the Senate Armed Services Committee .
It ’ s a meaningful step in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic , because it will help protect against future outbreaks of disease @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by US adversaries .
The budget allocated to health and human services is just a fraction of the NDAA , at $ 106 billion , and the additional funding for biological threat reduction is rooted in a strategy that protects the health and safety not just of US citizens but of people around the globe .
Even so , it is pennies in comparison to other costly and unnecessary expenditures .
The $ 4.2 billion in total funding for the replacement of the nuclear-armed Ohio-lass submarine is over 80 times more than the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ threat reduction , and four times the budget allocated to health and human services .
To add insult to injury , the latest version of the defense bill would increase funding for the submarines by $ 175 million over the amount requested by the Trump administration this year—a fact that the ships ’ builder , General Dynamics , can only celebrate .
The bill is littered with pork for weapons manufacturers , such as the addition of over a dozen more Lockheed Martin F-35 combat aircraft than the Pentagon asked for , plus @ @ @ @ @ @ @ nuclear weapons testing—something that over 70 percent of Americans oppose .
In the midst of this spending spree , new processes instituted because of the pandemic mean that only a handful of amendments are allowed to be offered during general consideration of the defense bill on the floor of Congress .
It would be hard to argue that the 57 members of the House Armed Services Committee—who are themselves only able to offer limited amendments in committee consideration of the bill—represent the entire country .
If a budget package worth $ 740.5 billion @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that suppresses the voices of most representatives , what does this signal for the future of the legislative process ?
The revolving door between the defense industry , the Pentagon , and Congress has consistently benefited those on the inside , leaving the taxpaying majority to pick up the bill .
To combat that , bold action must be taken now .
Senator Bernie Sanders , as well as Representatives Barbara Lee and Mark Pocan in the House , have suggested a 10 percent decrease to the Pentagon budget , a savings of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that money should instead be redistributed to pandemic response , jobs , education , housing , and other urgent needs .
If legislators continue to pour money into endless wars and US military superiority , it will be a slap in the face to the millions of Americans now struggling economically , as well as the health care professionals who have not been given adequate protection while responding to Covid-19 .
No one knows when the pandemic will end .
But it ’ s certain that the weapons promised in this year ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cost us for years to come .

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The annual US defense budget has never been crafted through a particularly transparent process. Now, a global pandemic has taken the yearly passage of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) from merely murky to downright opaque.
Normally characterized by late-night sessions of debate and hundreds of offered amendments, the passage of the defense bill is often deemed a bipartisan effort. However, updated processes in the House and Senate to encourage social distancing during the Covid-19 pandemic—such as only allowing members to vote in shifts, with thorough cleanings between groups—threaten to severely limit amendments to the bill when it comes to the House floor later this month. That puts us in danger of a defense spending spree rubber-stamped by Congress. And this year’s version of the NDAA—for which the Trump administration has proposed a budget of $740.5 billion—is poised to benefit one party more than any other: the arms industry and its lobbyists, who are seeking to cash in while overriding the opinions of the American public on key national security issues.
The Trump administration’s quest for military dominance and its campaigns of maximum pressure—such as the effort to provoke regime change in Iran—stand to cost taxpayers tens of billions in weapons modernization costs this year alone, for both nuclear and conventional systems. Of particular concern is the cost of building new Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs). Former secretary of defense William J. Perry has described ICBMs as “some of the most dangerous weapons in the world”; if the president were to receive warning of a potential attack—even one that could be a false alarm—he would only have a matter of minutes to decide whether to launch an ICBM. That increases the chances of an accidental nuclear war.
For both the 2020 NDAA and this year’s fiscal year 2021 budget, representatives suggested amendments that would require the Pentagon to investigate whether a new ICBM were needed at all. In both years, the amendments were defeated in the House by a solid block of Republicans and a significant number of Democrats—in part thanks to lobbying by defense tech company Northrop Grumman, which stands to make billions building the missiles. Northrop Grumman is currently on course to receive a sole-source contract to build a new ICBM, which could boost the missile’s cost beyond the current estimates of $85 billion to $150 billion. 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 A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life 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 A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life Chris Lehmann Related Article Representative Barbara Lee: ‘Defund the Pentagon Budget’ John Nichols
Without firm congressional action, the Pentagon’s multi-decade nuclear weapons buildup may proceed unchallenged, or even increase in cost. Some already estimate that spending could add up to as much as $2 trillion over the next 30 years. Marshall Billingslea, the special presidential envoy for arms control, boasted in May that the United States knows how “to spend the adversary into oblivion.” It’s now clear that he was being sincere. The real question is whether the American people will suffer the same oblivion.
In the Senate, adjustments to the already misguided defense budget requested by the Trump administration underscore the dysfunctional character of the congressional budget process. One such adjustment is an increase of $50 million for biological threat reduction, passed by the Senate Armed Services Committee. It’s a meaningful step in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, because it will help protect against future outbreaks of disease, including any that might be perpetrated by US adversaries. The budget allocated to health and human services is just a fraction of the NDAA, at $106 billion, and the additional funding for biological threat reduction is rooted in a strategy that protects the health and safety not just of US citizens but of people around the globe. Even so, it is pennies in comparison to other costly and unnecessary expenditures.
The $4.2 billion in total funding for the replacement of the nuclear-armed Ohio-lass submarine is over 80 times more than the Senate’s prescribed increase to biological threat reduction, and four times the budget allocated to health and human services. To add insult to injury, the latest version of the defense bill would increase funding for the submarines by $175 million over the amount requested by the Trump administration this year—a fact that the ships’ builder, General Dynamics, can only celebrate. The bill is littered with pork for weapons manufacturers, such as the addition of over a dozen more Lockheed Martin F-35 combat aircraft than the Pentagon asked for, plus $10 million to prepare for resuming nuclear weapons testing—something that over 70 percent of Americans oppose. Current Issue View our current issue
In the midst of this spending spree, new processes instituted because of the pandemic mean that only a handful of amendments are allowed to be offered during general consideration of the defense bill on the floor of Congress. It would be hard to argue that the 57 members of the House Armed Services Committee—who are themselves only able to offer limited amendments in committee consideration of the bill—represent the entire country. If a budget package worth $740.5 billion is allowed to pass in a process that suppresses the voices of most representatives, what does this signal for the future of the legislative process?
The revolving door between the defense industry, the Pentagon, and Congress has consistently benefited those on the inside, leaving the taxpaying majority to pick up the bill. To combat that, bold action must be taken now. Senator Bernie Sanders, as well as Representatives Barbara Lee and Mark Pocan in the House, have suggested a 10 percent decrease to the Pentagon budget, a savings of roughly $70 billion. They say that money should instead be redistributed to pandemic response, jobs, education, housing, and other urgent needs.
If legislators continue to pour money into endless wars and US military superiority, it will be a slap in the face to the millions of Americans now struggling economically, as well as the health care professionals who have not been given adequate protection while responding to Covid-19. No one knows when the pandemic will end. But it’s certain that the weapons promised in this year’s Pentagon spending bill will continue to cost us for years to come.


thenation--2020-07-02--The White Left Needs to Embrace Black Leadership

We are seeing one of the largest uprisings in US history , and Black leftist organizers and Black working-class people are leading it .
The video of George Floyd begging for his life and calling for his mother as Derek Chauvin , a white police officer , kneeled on his neck for eight minutes and 46 seconds made Floyd this generation ’ s Emmett Till .
When white Americans watched that scene of unchecked racism , state power , and the toxic masculinity that permeates police culture , they had a choice : to allow that cop to speak for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ part of a movement against white supremacy and police repression .
Millions across the world opted for the latter .
This is not like the 1960s .
White people marched in civil rights demonstrations , formed committees on interracial cooperation , and joined with the Black freedom movement , but the fire this time is hotter .
We did not see this many simultaneous protests that were this large and this diverse .
We also see mass militancy and the willingness of large numbers of people to take risks .
During a dangerous @ @ @ @ @ @ @ gas , rubber bullets , and police batons .
While protesters hold up the simple message “ Black Lives Matter , ” organizers in the Movement for Black Lives make clear that this fight is as much about ending racial capitalism as it is anything else .
The white left needs to understand that this is what class struggle in the 21st century looks like .
To deny that and reduce the protests to an “ identitarian ” impulse is self-defeating to any serious left project for systemic change .
Black poor and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as intertwined : Police violence , targeted mass incarceration , and social and economic abandonment are linked .
The left loses strength and credibility if it pretends that there is a colorblind class experience .
In his 1991 book , The Wages of Whiteness , historian David Roediger describes how the white working class evolved in juxtaposition to enslaved Black labor .
White supremacy was a part of the psychological wage that was paid to buy the loyalty and shape the consciousness of white workers in the antebellum period , and that legacy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ been poor , but at least they were not n_____s .
White workers were given a kind of caste distinction with material benefits and the social power to violate , harass , and kill Black people .
For much of US history , policing was a white man ’ s profession , originating in part out of the slave catchers of the Old South .
The psychological wage of whiteness can be read into the face of Chauvin as he looked at the cell phone camera while he murdered a handcuffed , unarmed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , unaccountable , and fearing no one , he projected the message : “ I am empowered to do this.
” Yet a sector of the white left remains in stubborn denial about the centrality of Black struggle and Black leadership to any successful and sustainable movement for radical change .
There are two versions of this argument .
One clings to the notion that so-called identity politics are divisive and that the left should focus on economic platforms that can unite the entire working class .
The second is an updated version @ @ @ @ @ @ @ but with the end of de jure racism that all changed .
Supporters of these arguments lump together all Black political voices as identitarian if they foreground the fight against racism .
They ignore the Black left voices that have argued against narrow identity politics , bourgeois Black nationalism , mainstream integrationism , and class-biased representational politics .
From the Combahee River Collective to the Black Radical Congress to many of today ’ s organizers , Black leftists , especially Black left feminists , have never pushed a classless race analysis , or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The failure to confront white supremacy as a defining feature of US capitalism has consequences .
The Bernie Sanders campaign is one sad example .
I offer this critique as someone who publicly supported Sanders and who , along with others , tried to push his campaign to advance a robust racial justice agenda .
Nearly all the Democratic presidential candidates showed up in Selma , Ala. , to commemorate the anniversary of the civil rights march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge .
At a time of increasing white nationalism , it was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ leaders mark the fight for racial justice in the South .
Sanders , the most left candidate in the race , was conspicuously absent .
Then , Sanders was supposed to go to Mississippi to give a speech on race to coincide with his endorsement by Jackson ’ s radical Black mayor , Chokwe Lumumba .
Black feminist Barbara Smith was on a plane to meet him and stand on the platform beside him .
He never showed up .
Instead , he went to Flint , Mich. , where again he was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to the African American community .
Rather than give that speech , he awkwardly moderated a panel of brilliant Black activists teaching the overwhelmingly white audience about racism .
Still , Sanders ’ s platform would have materially improved conditions for large numbers of Black working-class and poor people , which is why many Black activists supported him .
But his failure to articulate a clear understanding of and commitment to fighting the white supremacist underpinnings of racial capitalism may be why he never garnered the Black support needed to win the nomination @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s campaign , but this may have been its fatal flaw .
Another disturbing exemplar of the predominately white left ’ s challenges with race is Democratic Socialists of America .
On the one hand , wow .
Trump ’ s election fueled the organization ’ s exponential growth , and subsequent electoral victories and campaigns have emboldened it .
By presenting candidates and demands that seem common sense to many Americans , DSA has helped to reintroduce socialism into mainstream political discourse .
That said , and despite a handful of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ DSA is largely devoid of Black leadership at the national level .
How can that be acceptable in 2020 ?
Why isn ’ t everyone in the organization worried about the implications , or at least the optics ?
Why hasn ’ t DSA gone into a deep retreat to read , learn , and then propose bold changes that will open the doors to Black left leadership ?
If they were unsure who the fiercest anti-racist organizers of this generation are , they need only to look to the streets of Atlanta @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and New York .
Can we lift this political boulder and build the principled solidarity required to sustain a radical anti-racist left movement in this country ?
There are some very hopeful signs .
Hundreds of thousands of white people waded into the streets of major US cities and small towns to say no to racism .
Anyone who thinks that is not a sea change in racial consciousness has not been paying attention .
Second , there are Black and Latinx-led rumblings in the electoral arena .
The reimagined and more @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s leadership is a challenge to the mainstream corporate Democratic Party , which has absorbed so many career-minded Black politicians into its system of patronage and compliance .
Justice Democrats are also a breath of fresh air , unafraid to challenge incumbent Democrats with more progressive alternatives .
Black Visibility Matters—and Not Just During Trauma Third , there is the growing visibility of Black-led social movements , which have spent the last few years building power .
There is a direct link between the Black Lives Matter movement of 2012–16 uprisings and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and Minneapolis , and between Mike Brown and George Floyd , both of them stand-ins for many others , including many women and trans victims of police , vigilante , and even intimate partner violence .
The debates , local campaigns , organizational infrastructure , relationship building , and self-critiques that have occurred since Ferguson have prepared a new cadre of leaders for the biggest battle of their lives .
The Movement for Black Lives ( M4BL ) —which emerged out of the protests of the 2014 murders of Eric Garner , Tamir @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Brown—is building broad-based support for a set of policies coming out of the coalition ’ s own policy and research team .
It has updated the 2016 Vision for Black Lives document , which Robin D.G .
Kelley called nothing less than “ a plan for ending structural racism , saving the planet , and transforming the entire nation.
” On Juneteenth weekend , M4BL ’ s website boasted over 500 in-person protests across the country .
In 2017 , M4BL launched a multiracial formation of over 80 organizations called the Rising Majority @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the usual practice of large white-led formations calling together groups , framing the conversation , and then adding Black-led organizations to the mix after the foundations are laid .
Rising Majority is anti-racist , anti-capitalist , and Black- , indigenous- and people-of-color-led .
It has worked to build unity with progressive elected officials , holding a televised forum with Representatives Ilhan Omar , Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez , Ayanna Pressley , and Rashida Tlaib at Howard University in February .
It is also building solidarity across movement sectors .
In 2018 , M4BL sent a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ support Mijente ’ s # FreeOurFuture Day of Action against immigration detention and ICE violence .
More recently , it cohosted a virtual teach-in with Angela Davis and Naomi Klein that drew over 200,000 viewers .
Leftroots is another people-of-color-led socialist organization that has been engaging activists in deep discussion and study over the past few years .
Finally , academics and intellectuals are organizing through the Black feminist-led network Scholars for Social Justice ( SSJ ) , which has issued statements and op-eds supporting Black protest , held teach-ins , shared curricula @ @ @ @ @ @ @ reparations in higher education .
SSJ hosted a major online teach-in on universities and police during Juneteenth weekend .
Given the neoliberal politics that have dominated universities and the increased corporatization of universities , SSJ is an attempt to step outside of the constricting intellectual and political framework of the academy .
If the white left embraces this ascendant Black leadership , we will all be stronger for it .
This is a time for rigorous debate , principled solidarity , and humble determination .
And right now , I see more and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ In the middle of it all , challenges notwithstanding , I am determined to have an “ optimism of the will.
” Pessimism be damned .

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Get The Nation’s Weekly Newsletter Fridays. The best of the week. Email By signing up, you confirm that you are over the age of 16 and agree to receive occasional promotional offers for programs that support The Nation’s journalism. You can read our Privacy Policy here. Fridays. The best of the week.
Thank you for signing up for The Nation’s weekly newsletter.
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Sign up for our Wine Club today. Did you know you can support The Nation by drinking wine?
We are seeing one of the largest uprisings in US history, and Black leftist organizers and Black working-class people are leading it. The video of George Floyd begging for his life and calling for his mother as Derek Chauvin, a white police officer, kneeled on his neck for eight minutes and 46 seconds made Floyd this generation’s Emmett Till. When white Americans watched that scene of unchecked racism, state power, and the toxic masculinity that permeates police culture, they had a choice: to allow that cop to speak for them or to hit the streets as part of a movement against white supremacy and police repression. Millions across the world opted for the latter.
This is not like the 1960s. White people marched in civil rights demonstrations, formed committees on interracial cooperation, and joined with the Black freedom movement, but the fire this time is hotter. We did not see this many simultaneous protests that were this large and this diverse. We also see mass militancy and the willingness of large numbers of people to take risks. During a dangerous pandemic, people are facing down tear gas, rubber bullets, and police batons. While protesters hold up the simple message “Black Lives Matter,” organizers in the Movement for Black Lives make clear that this fight is as much about ending racial capitalism as it is anything else.
The white left needs to understand that this is what class struggle in the 21st century looks like. To deny that and reduce the protests to an “identitarian” impulse is self-defeating to any serious left project for systemic change. Black poor and working-class people experience capitalism and white supremacy as intertwined: Police violence, targeted mass incarceration, and social and economic abandonment are linked. The left loses strength and credibility if it pretends that there is a color-blind class experience.
In his 1991 book, The Wages of Whiteness, historian David Roediger describes how the white working class evolved in juxtaposition to enslaved Black labor. White supremacy was a part of the psychological wage that was paid to buy the loyalty and shape the consciousness of white workers in the antebellum period, and that legacy carried forward. White workers might have been poor, but at least they were not n_____s. White workers were given a kind of caste distinction with material benefits and the social power to violate, harass, and kill Black people. For much of US history, policing was a white man’s profession, originating in part out of the slave catchers of the Old South. The psychological wage of whiteness can be read into the face of Chauvin as he looked at the cell phone camera while he murdered a handcuffed, unarmed Black man in broad daylight. Unmoved, unaccountable, and fearing no one, he projected the message: “I am empowered to do this.”
Yet a sector of the white left remains in stubborn denial about the centrality of Black struggle and Black leadership to any successful and sustainable movement for radical change. There are two versions of this argument. One clings to the notion that so-called identity politics are divisive and that the left should focus on economic platforms that can unite the entire working class. The second is an updated version that argues that systemic racism did exist but with the end of de jure racism that all changed. Supporters of these arguments lump together all Black political voices as identitarian if they foreground the fight against racism. They ignore the Black left voices that have argued against narrow identity politics, bourgeois Black nationalism, mainstream integrationism, and class-biased representational politics. From the Combahee River Collective to the Black Radical Congress to many of today’s organizers, Black leftists, especially Black left feminists, have never pushed a classless race analysis, or a raceless or genderless class analysis. 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 A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life 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 A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life Chris Lehmann
The failure to confront white supremacy as a defining feature of US capitalism has consequences. The Bernie Sanders campaign is one sad example. I offer this critique as someone who publicly supported Sanders and who, along with others, tried to push his campaign to advance a robust racial justice agenda. Nearly all the Democratic presidential candidates showed up in Selma, Ala., to commemorate the anniversary of the civil rights march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. At a time of increasing white nationalism, it was important for many Black people that political leaders mark the fight for racial justice in the South. Sanders, the most left candidate in the race, was conspicuously absent.
Then, Sanders was supposed to go to Mississippi to give a speech on race to coincide with his endorsement by Jackson’s radical Black mayor, Chokwe Lumumba. Black feminist Barbara Smith was on a plane to meet him and stand on the platform beside him. He never showed up. Instead, he went to Flint, Mich., where again he was supposed to deliver a speech on race to the African American community. Rather than give that speech, he awkwardly moderated a panel of brilliant Black activists teaching the overwhelmingly white audience about racism. Still, Sanders’s platform would have materially improved conditions for large numbers of Black working-class and poor people, which is why many Black activists supported him. But his failure to articulate a clear understanding of and commitment to fighting the white supremacist underpinnings of racial capitalism may be why he never garnered the Black support needed to win the nomination. There were many strengths in Sanders’s campaign, but this may have been its fatal flaw. Current Issue View our current issue
Another disturbing exemplar of the predominately white left’s challenges with race is Democratic Socialists of America. On the one hand, wow. Trump’s election fueled the organization’s exponential growth, and subsequent electoral victories and campaigns have emboldened it. By presenting candidates and demands that seem common sense to many Americans, DSA has helped to reintroduce socialism into mainstream political discourse.
That said, and despite a handful of brilliant leaders in the Afro-Socialist caucus, DSA is largely devoid of Black leadership at the national level. How can that be acceptable in 2020? Why isn’t everyone in the organization worried about the implications, or at least the optics? Why hasn’t DSA gone into a deep retreat to read, learn, and then propose bold changes that will open the doors to Black left leadership? If they were unsure who the fiercest anti-racist organizers of this generation are, they need only to look to the streets of Atlanta, Chicago, Minneapolis, Los Angeles, and New York.
Can we lift this political boulder and build the principled solidarity required to sustain a radical anti-racist left movement in this country? There are some very hopeful signs. Hundreds of thousands of white people waded into the streets of major US cities and small towns to say no to racism. Anyone who thinks that is not a sea change in racial consciousness has not been paying attention.
Second, there are Black and Latinx-led rumblings in the electoral arena. The reimagined and more inclusive Working Families Party under Maurice Mitchell’s leadership is a challenge to the mainstream corporate Democratic Party, which has absorbed so many career-minded Black politicians into its system of patronage and compliance. Justice Democrats are also a breath of fresh air, unafraid to challenge incumbent Democrats with more progressive alternatives. Related Article Black Visibility Matters—and Not Just During Trauma Ernest Owens
Third, there is the growing visibility of Black-led social movements, which have spent the last few years building power. There is a direct link between the Black Lives Matter movement of 2012–16 uprisings and the protests of 2020, between Ferguson and Minneapolis, and between Mike Brown and George Floyd, both of them stand-ins for many others, including many women and trans victims of police, vigilante, and even intimate partner violence. The debates, local campaigns, organizational infrastructure, relationship building, and self-critiques that have occurred since Ferguson have prepared a new cadre of leaders for the biggest battle of their lives.
The Movement for Black Lives (M4BL)—which emerged out of the protests of the 2014 murders of Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Sandra Bland, and Michael Brown—is building broad-based support for a set of policies coming out of the coalition’s own policy and research team. It has updated the 2016 Vision for Black Lives document, which Robin D.G. Kelley called nothing less than “a plan for ending structural racism, saving the planet, and transforming the entire nation.” On Juneteenth weekend, M4BL’s website boasted over 500 in-person protests across the country.
In 2017, M4BL launched a multiracial formation of over 80 organizations called the Rising Majority. This alone is a reversal of the usual practice of large white-led formations calling together groups, framing the conversation, and then adding Black-led organizations to the mix after the foundations are laid. Rising Majority is anti-racist, anti-capitalist, and Black-, indigenous- and people-of-color-led. It has worked to build unity with progressive elected officials, holding a televised forum with Representatives Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley, and Rashida Tlaib at Howard University in February. It is also building solidarity across movement sectors. In 2018, M4BL sent a contingent of activists to San Diego to support Mijente’s #FreeOurFuture Day of Action against immigration detention and ICE violence. More recently, it cohosted a virtual teach-in with Angela Davis and Naomi Klein that drew over 200,000 viewers.
Leftroots is another people-of-color-led socialist organization that has been engaging activists in deep discussion and study over the past few years. Finally, academics and intellectuals are organizing through the Black feminist-led network Scholars for Social Justice (SSJ), which has issued statements and op-eds supporting Black protest, held teach-ins, shared curricula, and convened a working group on reparations in higher education. SSJ hosted a major online teach-in on universities and police during Juneteenth weekend. Given the neoliberal politics that have dominated universities and the increased corporatization of universities, SSJ is an attempt to step outside of the constricting intellectual and political framework of the academy.
If the white left embraces this ascendant Black leadership, we will all be stronger for it. This is a time for rigorous debate, principled solidarity, and humble determination. And right now, I see more and more of all of those things. In the middle of it all, challenges notwithstanding, I am determined to have an “optimism of the will.” Pessimism be damned.


thenation--2020-07-02--ICE Just Became Even Less Transparent

ICE Just Became Even Less Transparent

Immigration and Customs Enforcement ( ICE ) can now operate in greater secrecy , thanks to a special security classification quietly granted to it by the Trump administration .
While ICE chief Matthew Albence heralded it as “ a tremendous achievement , ” experts say the designation deals a blow to transparency .
On June 11 , the administration classified ICE as a “ Security Agency , ” according to a memo signed by Albence and dated June 26 .
This new designation puts ICE employees in the same category as high-level intelligence officials , and blocks from disclosure information @ @ @ @ @ @ @ name , job title , and salary .
The memo was provided to The Nation by an ICE official on condition of anonymity .
The memo states : While it ’ s true that some law enforcement agencies enjoy this classification , many do not ; in the past it has been limited to top-tier agencies like the FBI and Secret Service .
And as the memo goes on to note , the new designation doesn ’ t just apply to field agents , but rather to all ICE employees .
“ For @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be designated , in its entirety , as a ‘ security/sensitive ’ agency , so that OPM would withhold all employee information under FOIA Exemption 6 ( unwarranted invasion of personal privacy ) , ” the memo states .
“ Designating ICE as a security agency is a clear attempt to shield agents from accountability , ” Emily Manna , policy director at Open the Government , told The Nation .
“ The Freedom of Information Act already contains a sufficient exemption to protect legitimate personal privacy interests .
Preventing the public from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ public officials—is a violation of the public ’ s right to know and should be reversed immediately.
” The memo claims the classification is necessary to protect its staff from increased threats in recent years , saying : The memo provides no examples .
ICE has come under increasing criticism in recent years , due to the Trump administration ’ s hard-line immigration policies .
This has culminated in major protests in front of different ICE field offices , which an ICE employee told The Nation contributed to a sense of paranoia within @ @ @ @ @ @ @ reported on an internal ICE memo detailing a program called “ Operation Frozen Shield , ” which authorized enhanced security measures , including Federal Protective Services deployment to protect against threats like active shooters .
For years , low employee morale has plagued ICE , where morale is among the lowest at any federal agency ; in 2017 , ICE ranked 288th out of 330 .
As I reported last year , Kevin McAleenan , chief of ICE ’ s parent agency , Department of Homeland Security ( DHS ) , sent out @ @ @ @ @ @ @ percent increase in employee morale .
Last year , McAleenan also issued a public statement drawing attention to an incident in which a man firebombed an ICE detention facility in Tacoma , Wash .
Though no ICE employees were injured , McAleenan decried the incident as “ only the latest among other recent examples of violence and hostility directed toward our DHS.
” While ICE ’ s argument for the security agency classification is its need to protect staff , it could hurt ICE employees in some cases , according to Irvin McCullough @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Accountability Project .
“ Sometimes whistle-blowers are forced to FOIA records to support their case , ” McCullough explains .
“ When ICE is designated—in its entirety—as a security agency , whistle-blowers ’ and the public ’ s right to information is weakened .
Underpinning this move are concerns that this administration is abusing its redaction authorities .
It ’ ll be important for freedom of information advocates and congressional overseers to ensure ICE isn ’ t abusing this overly broad status.
” ICE isn ’ t the first immigration-related agency to receive @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Nation reported that the Trump administration had reclassified Customs and Border Protection as a security agency .
The designations appear to represent a gradual move away from traditional immigration mandates and toward those of an intelligence agency .
That status is one that ICE appears to have coveted for years .
In 2018 , The Daily Beast reported that dating back to the Obama administration , ICE leadership has sought to join the US Intelligence Community , the consortium of spy agencies which could have granted ICE extraordinary privileges .
ICE was never @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a personal note , with Director Albence exhorting staffers to “ remain strong , stand proud , and above all , be safe .
”

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Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) can now operate in greater secrecy, thanks to a special security classification quietly granted to it by the Trump administration. While ICE chief Matthew Albence heralded it as “a tremendous achievement,” experts say the designation deals a blow to transparency.
On June 11, the administration classified ICE as a “Security Agency,” according to a memo signed by Albence and dated June 26. This new designation puts ICE employees in the same category as high-level intelligence officials, and blocks from disclosure information that is typically public, such as name, job title, and salary. The memo was provided to The Nation by an ICE official on condition of anonymity. The memo states:
I am pleased to announce that on June 11, 2020, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) approved ICE’s request to be identified as a “security/sensitive” agency for Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) purposes. This designation will ensure that OPM withholds all relevant personally identifiable information (PII) of all ICE personnel where it processes FOIA requests moving forward, just as it does for other law enforcement agencies and federal prosecutors.
While it’s true that some law enforcement agencies enjoy this classification, many do not; in the past it has been limited to top-tier agencies like the FBI and Secret Service. And as the memo goes on to note, the new designation doesn’t just apply to field agents, but rather to all ICE employees. secret agents The Shadow Court Cementing Trump’s Immigration Policy Felipe de la Hoz
“For many years, ICE has worked to be designated, in its entirety, as a ‘security/sensitive’ agency, so that OPM would withhold all employee information under FOIA Exemption 6 (unwarranted invasion of personal privacy),” the memo states.
“Designating ICE as a security agency is a clear attempt to shield agents from accountability,” Emily Manna, policy director at Open the Government, told The Nation. “The Freedom of Information Act already contains a sufficient exemption to protect legitimate personal privacy interests. Preventing the public from obtaining any information about ICE agents—who are public officials—is a violation of the public’s right to know and should be reversed immediately.”
The memo claims the classification is necessary to protect its staff from increased threats in recent years, saying:
The increase in threats, intimidation, and doxing directed at ICE personnel in recent years underscored the need for this designation. Numerous examples of the harassment and threats you have had to endure were used to impress upon OPM that the ongoing disclosure of our employees’ identifying information under FOIA was simply unacceptable.
The memo provides no examples. 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 A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life 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 A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life Chris Lehmann
ICE has come under increasing criticism in recent years, due to the Trump administration’s hard-line immigration policies. This has culminated in major protests in front of different ICE field offices, which an ICE employee told The Nation contributed to a sense of paranoia within the agency. Last year, I reported on an internal ICE memo detailing a program called “Operation Frozen Shield,” which authorized enhanced security measures, including Federal Protective Services deployment to protect against threats like active shooters.
For years, low employee morale has plagued ICE, where morale is among the lowest at any federal agency; in 2017, ICE ranked 288th out of 330. As I reported last year, Kevin McAleenan, chief of ICE’s parent agency, Department of Homeland Security (DHS), sent out an internal e-mail celebrating a modest 2 percent increase in employee morale.
Last year, McAleenan also issued a public statement drawing attention to an incident in which a man firebombed an ICE detention facility in Tacoma, Wash. Though no ICE employees were injured, McAleenan decried the incident as “only the latest among other recent examples of violence and hostility directed toward our DHS.” Current Issue View our current issue
While ICE’s argument for the security agency classification is its need to protect staff, it could hurt ICE employees in some cases, according to Irvin McCullough, national security analyst at the Government Accountability Project.
“Sometimes whistle-blowers are forced to FOIA records to support their case,” McCullough explains. “When ICE is designated—in its entirety—as a security agency, whistle-blowers’ and the public’s right to information is weakened. Underpinning this move are concerns that this administration is abusing its redaction authorities. It’ll be important for freedom of information advocates and congressional overseers to ensure ICE isn’t abusing this overly broad status.”
ICE isn’t the first immigration-related agency to receive this designation. In February, The Nation reported that the Trump administration had reclassified Customs and Border Protection as a security agency. The designations appear to represent a gradual move away from traditional immigration mandates and toward those of an intelligence agency.
That status is one that ICE appears to have coveted for years. In 2018, The Daily Beast reported that dating back to the Obama administration, ICE leadership has sought to join the US Intelligence Community, the consortium of spy agencies which could have granted ICE extraordinary privileges. ICE was never granted admission.
The memo closes on a personal note, with Director Albence exhorting staffers to “remain strong, stand proud, and above all, be safe.”


thenation--2020-07-03--As Infection Rates Soar, Trump Says Virus Could Just ‘Disappear’

The Signal this week : America has jumped the shark when it comes to the pandemic .
After politicizing both mask-wearing and the reopening of state economies , Trump is now presiding over an out-of-control spread of the novel coronavirus , from sea to shining sea .
The numbers are absolutely terrifying .
The United States recorded more than 50,000 new cases on Wednesday ; earlier this week , Dr. Fauci told Congress that he fears that number could soon reach 100,000 .
Even that number might prove to be too conservative : New York Times columnist Paul Krugman recently @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of a little over 7 million , was recording more cases per day than the entire European Union , with a population of more than 446 million .
Florida , Texas , and a slew of other states are also seeing exponential growth in the number of new infections .
As the country veers into a public health calamity—and as more and more hospitals are forced to activate their surge capacities to deal with new patients—Trump just keeps speaking gibberish .
On Wednesday , he mused again that the coronavirus would somehow just @ @ @ @ @ @ @ governors are belatedly urging Americans to mask up and stay out of crowded settings , Trump is gearing up for an early Independence Day party and fireworks display at Mount Rushmore .
This will include an audience of 7,500 , and absolutely no social distancing or mask-wearing will be enforced .
This is sheer madness .
The country is facing a loss of life utterly unprecedented in modern times , especially in such a wealthy country .
And all we get from the White House is Noise and vainglorious cultist gatherings , organized @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Trump ’ s praise-craving itch .
Pence Masks Up While Trump Keeps Dog-Whistling There is a radical disconnect between what is happening in reality , and what is happening inside Trump ’ s head—and among his inner circle .
In reality , even conservative states such as Texas are now racing to shut down businesses that they insisted on reopening in May .
In Trumpland , his courtiers are debating whether Trump should ignore the pandemic and focus instead on talking about the economy .
They don ’ t seem to realize , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ never be able to heal unless the pandemic is reined in .
In reality , the country is facing a second wave of mass layoffs as the “ recovery ” falters in the face of the virus ’ s rampage .
But in Trump ’ s head ( and on his Twitter feed ) , the conversation is all about the perils of Black Lives Matter—a phrase he has now labeled a “ symbol of hate ” —as well as the imperative of preserving monuments to and military bases named after slaveholders and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ puniness on display here , a simply remarkable abdication of responsibility .
The more Trump blusters , the smaller he gets .
And the rest of the world knows it .
The EU has now barred travelers coming from the United States , a scenario that would have been inconceivable just a few short months ago .
The Chinese government has enacted a brutal national security law that marks the death knell of Hong Kong ’ s autonomy—something China is unlikely to have done if it faced a credible US leader able to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a move .
And , as we now know , much of the intelligence community believes that Russia offered bounties to those willing to kill US soldiers in Afghanistan .
Trump , instead of talking with allies and strategizing a response , has claimed the whole story is a hoax .
There are still four months to the election .
If current trends continue , by Election Day , millions more Americans will test positive for Covid-19 .
Tens of thousands , if not hundreds of thousands , more will die .
As @ @ @ @ @ @ @ realize that what has often been described as a disaster is even worse than that .
The word “ disaster ” could imply something like an earthquake , or a hurricane—things that are not preventable , for which there is no one to blame .
But this is different .
The spread of coronavirus infection in the United States is the result of deliberate , shambolic policy choices .
It is the consequence of Trump ’ s rabid rejection of science , his peddling of conspiracy theories , his embrace of irrationalism .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ cult of selfishness and hyper-individualism .
This American tsunami of disease and death and economic devastation isn ’ t just a disaster .
It ’ s a crime .

The Signal this week: America has jumped the shark when it comes to the pandemic. After politicizing both mask-wearing and the reopening of state economies, Trump is now presiding over an out-of-control spread of the novel coronavirus, from sea to shining sea.
The numbers are absolutely terrifying. The United States recorded more than 50,000 new cases on Wednesday; earlier this week, Dr. Fauci told Congress that he fears that number could soon reach 100,000. Even that number might prove to be too conservative: New York Times columnist Paul Krugman recently noted that Arizona, with a population of a little over 7 million, was recording more cases per day than the entire European Union, with a population of more than 446 million. Florida, Texas, and a slew of other states are also seeing exponential growth in the number of new infections.
As the country veers into a public health calamity—and as more and more hospitals are forced to activate their surge capacities to deal with new patients—Trump just keeps speaking gibberish. On Wednesday, he mused again that the coronavirus would somehow just “disappear.” While GOP senators and governors are belatedly urging Americans to mask up and stay out of crowded settings, Trump is gearing up for an early Independence Day party and fireworks display at Mount Rushmore. This will include an audience of 7,500, and absolutely no social distancing or mask-wearing will be enforced.
This is sheer madness. The country is facing a loss of life utterly unprecedented in modern times, especially in such a wealthy country. And all we get from the White House is Noise and vainglorious cultist gatherings, organized for no greater purpose than to scratch Trump’s praise-craving itch. Related Article Pence Masks Up While Trump Keeps Dog-Whistling Sasha Abramsky
There is a radical disconnect between what is happening in reality, and what is happening inside Trump’s head—and among his inner circle.
In reality, even conservative states such as Texas are now racing to shut down businesses that they insisted on reopening in May. In Trumpland, his courtiers are debating whether Trump should ignore the pandemic and focus instead on talking about the economy. They don’t seem to realize, or care, that the economy will never be able to heal unless the pandemic is reined in. 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 A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life 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 A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life Chris Lehmann
In reality, the country is facing a second wave of mass layoffs as the “recovery” falters in the face of the virus’s rampage. But in Trump’s head (and on his Twitter feed), the conversation is all about the perils of Black Lives Matter—a phrase he has now labeled a “symbol of hate”—as well as the imperative of preserving monuments to and military bases named after slaveholders and secessionist traitors. Current Issue View our current issue
There is a vast puniness on display here, a simply remarkable abdication of responsibility. The more Trump blusters, the smaller he gets. And the rest of the world knows it. The EU has now barred travelers coming from the United States, a scenario that would have been inconceivable just a few short months ago. The Chinese government has enacted a brutal national security law that marks the death knell of Hong Kong’s autonomy—something China is unlikely to have done if it faced a credible US leader able to muster an international effort to counter such a move. And, as we now know, much of the intelligence community believes that Russia offered bounties to those willing to kill US soldiers in Afghanistan. Trump, instead of talking with allies and strategizing a response, has claimed the whole story is a hoax.
There are still four months to the election. If current trends continue, by Election Day, millions more Americans will test positive for Covid-19. Tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, more will die. As I write that apocalyptic sentence, I realize that what has often been described as a disaster is even worse than that.
The word “disaster” could imply something like an earthquake, or a hurricane—things that are not preventable, for which there is no one to blame. But this is different. The spread of coronavirus infection in the United States is the result of deliberate, shambolic policy choices. It is the consequence of Trump’s rabid rejection of science, his peddling of conspiracy theories, his embrace of irrationalism. It is the end result of a cult of selfishness and hyper-individualism.
This American tsunami of disease and death and economic devastation isn’t just a disaster. It’s a crime.


thenation--2020-07-03--Is the Fourth of July Worth Celebrating?

On June 19 , 1865 , the news of emancipation finally reached Galveston , Texas .
On that day , the crack of the master ’ s whip would no longer be sanctioned by the laws of the United States .
Exercising the powers vested in him by President Lincoln , Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger , along with more than 1,800 federal troops , marched into Galveston to announce General Order Number 3 .
Addressed to the “ The people of Texas , ” the order set out Granger ’ s task : to enforce the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the end of the Civil War when freedom for the remaining enslaved persons in the deepest parts of the South , and the United States more generally , was confirmed .
In plain language , the General read the order to the now freed population : Thus , a full two years after the Emancipation Proclamation was issued , freedom for African Americans in the farthest corners of the American slave empire was conferred on the approximately 250,000 enslaved men , women and children in Texas who had been unaware of their already @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in December of 1865 , the 13th Amendment was ratified .
Juneteenth is reasonably one of the most important , if not the most significant , dates in the American calendar for African Americans .
‘ What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July ?
’ by Frederick Douglass But shortly following it on the calendar is its counterpart .
Thirteen years before the first Juneteenth , Frederick Douglass delivered his famous oration , “ What to the Slave is the Fourth of July.
” The speech proved remarkably prescient , lamenting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The Fourth of July was primarily a white people ’ s birthday .
“ The freedom gained is yours ; and you , therefore , may properly celebrate this anniversary , ” he said .
“ The Fourth of July is the first great fact in your nation ’ s history.
” “ Oppression , ” said Douglass , quoting from Ecclesiastes , “ makes a wise man mad.
” And for this reason , he understood the significance of the Fourth of July for European Americans .
The founding fathers , he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and overthrowing the yoke of British colonization , and “ if they did not go mad , they became restive under this treatment.
” In 2020 , after Black Americans have commemorated the 155th Juneteenth , it bears remarking that the nation ’ s continued degradation of Black humanity has driven Black America mad enough to ignite yet again another rebellion .
In its wake , the Fourth of July arrives with an indignity that , to some , may have hitherto gone unnoticed .
The rebellion began on another national holiday : @ @ @ @ @ @ @ thousands of Black Americans are dying from Covid-19 , the police in Minneapolis killed George Floyd , an unarmed 46-year-old African American man .
The ensuing national uprising in response to his brutal murder has generated great gestures of multiracial solidarity .
Even the whitest states in the country , including Montana , Idaho , Vermont , and Maine , have seen thousands of concerned Americans protesting .
From Minneapolis to New York , from Boston to Berlin , from Chicago to Paris , and from Los Angeles to London , one thing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a time of calls for transformative changes .
Across the United States , the city streets have filled with young , multiracial crowds in what has become the largest uprising since the Los Angeles riots of 1992 .
In one of its more symbolic shows of force yet , the rebellion has offended the racist sensibilities of President Donald Trump , who threatened to unleash the slavery-era Insurrection Act of 1807 .
It is fitting that the president should invoke his powers to suppress what he believes is an insurrectionary force .
As @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the long history of the Black freedom struggle against white supremacy was , at every turn , a bloody effort against the tradition of anti-Black violence .
“ Slavery everywhere had begun in violence , rested on violence , and nearly always ended in violence , ” he wrote in The Long Emancipation .
As Douglass remarked , on that July 4 , the hypocrisy of American racism was ritualized into a national holiday .
Year after year , African Americans were invited to the “ grand illuminated temple of liberty , ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of freedom that served to remind them of the “ sad sense of the disparity between us.
” The majority of white Americans ignored the fact of the “ inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony ” encoded in the symbolism of the Fourth of July for Black Americans .
“ Above your national , tumultuous joy , ” said Douglass , “ I hear the mournful wail of millions !
whose chains , heavy and grievous yesterday , are , today , rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach them.
” For @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the United States would have almost been unthinkable .
Before the Civil War , the general popular opinion of white Americans agreed with the Supreme Court ’ s 1857 Dred Scott decision , marking Black people as “ beings of an inferior order , and altogether unfit to associate with the white race either in social or political relations.
” Black people , the court argued , “ are not included , and were not intended to be included , under the word ‘ citizens ’ in the Constitution , and can therefore @ @ @ @ @ @ @ which that instrument provides for and secures to citizens of the United States.
” For the court , this logic was an axiom of American nationalism .
A few years after this opinion was announced , Douglass noted that the United States failed to uphold its promise , because “ the Declaration of Independence had been found impracticable ; the Constitution had been found impracticable.
” This impracticability pointed to the founding fathers , whom the Court credited with having created a national body in which Black men and women “ were not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ political family which the Constitution brought into existence , but were intended to be excluded from it.
” In other words , the protections , immunities and privileges of US citizenship , per the Court ’ s historical reading , were designated by and for white people .
The Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 was the first step toward reimagining American democracy from its otherwise white supremacist order .
Lincoln declared that “ all persons held as slaves ” within the Confederate states “ are , and henceforward shall be free.
” In the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to delineate the basic human rights of African Americans by first replacing the lash with contractual relations , and severing the master ’ s authority over the working lives of Black people .
Nevertheless , beyond de jure freedom , one question remained : Were Black men and women entitled to citizenship ?
One congressman , John Henderson of Mississippi , argued against anything more than emancipation .
“ In passing this amendment we do not confer upon the negro the right to vote , ” he said .
“ We give him @ @ @ @ @ @ @ leave the rest to the States.
” This fateful decision reflected the consensus of the political view of the majority of white Americans , North and South .
The economic experience of African Americans proves the adage that wealth is never destroyed , it is merely transformed or redistributed .
Indeed , the redistributive transfer of wealth extracted from Black bodies and deposited onto white coffers is the transnational story of people of African descent in the Americas .
When slavery ended in the British Caribbean in 1833 , the United Kingdom distributed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The British were merely following the example of France , who leveled an indemnity of 25 million francs against Haiti in 1825 as punitive reparations against Africans for overthrowing French slavocracy .
In the United States , the District of Columbia Compensated Emancipation Act , which ended slavery in the nation ’ s capital in 1862 , paid slaveholders up to $ 300 for each enslaved person they manumitted .
In the same vein , freed persons and their families were offered $ 100 , consistent with a colonization plan by the federal @ @ @ @ @ @ @ or Liberia in order to encourage self-exile to other lands .
In the end , some 3,000 slaves had been emancipated , but not under the conditions of their own making .
Hence , the first federal statute to abolish slavery as an institution just as immediately moved to affirm the denigration of Black life , in conceding that masters possessed property claims on the human lives they had held in captivity for generations .
In all three cases , masters were rewarded handsomely with reparative compensations .
The wealth that was created @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Black lives were exploited by capital extraction , trickled upward to masters while leaving the victims of slavery ’ s capitalism with no restorative recourse for recuperating the incalculable sums of wealth production .
To this day , the global descendants of the enslaved received nothing .
“ Heretofore the negro had been regarded only as the means of putting money in the white man ’ s pocket , like a bale of cotton , ” said Douglass .
By one calculation , the estimated value of the unpaid labor performed by enslaved @ @ @ @ @ @ @ compounded at 6 percent interest through 2016 , is $ 150,735,000,000,000 .
This gargantuan number suggests the execution of reparative justice in the form of a nationwide financial reparations would far exceed the capacity of the nation to pay .
One hundred and fifty years after the Civil War , a quarter of people of African descent live in poverty .
Freedom in the 21st century is underscored by a median wealth of $ 142,000 per white family and $ 11,000 for Black families .
These facts accentuate the shortcoming of the historical @ @ @ @ @ @ @ abolition of slavery did not sever white supremacy from the fundamental core of American political economy .
The culmination of the antislavery struggle came into fruition through the gains of the Reconstruction Amendments—the 13th , 14th , and 15th amendments , which granted African Americans birthright citizenship , suffrage , and protection under the law .
Black men and women , as one Radical Republican put it , would have had “ the right to till the soil , to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow , and to enjoy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , between the end of Reconstruction in 1877 and the dawn of the 20th century , the retrenchment of Black economic citizenship was well underway .
As former slaves left their conditions of servitude behind , they entered a world of hollow and partial freedoms , where the true prospect for succeeding outside of slavery was not so much augmented by the ballot box as it was undermined by deprivation of the basic necessities of life—food , public health , shelter—and , most important of all , land .
A former slave from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ light on this reality when he remarked , “ I feels and knows dat de years after de war was worser than befo.
” Not only was the nation unprepared to deal with the challenges posed by the new citizenship bestowed on the freedmen and -women , in the words of one ex-slave , Houston Hartsfield Holloway , it disregarded their circumstances : “ For we colored people did not know how to be free and the white people did not know how to have a free colored person about them.
” As @ @ @ @ @ @ @ concerned , perhaps the most urgent questions were not whether to be free and independent but what kind of freedom and under what conditions .
Centuries of the political economy of slavery gave way to the structural violence of institutionalized racism as an American way of life .
As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. observed , almost a century after emancipation , “ The American Negro finds himself living in a triple ghetto .
A ghetto of race , a ghetto of poverty , a ghetto of human misery.
” Unlike slavery , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ social and political exploitation , a ghettoized freedom is a more elusive and covert concept .
It hides oppressive conditions in spite of legal guarantees .
In a sense , descendants of enslaved Americans have always known that political emancipation without economic decency was an empty promise .
That is why King insisted on the contradistinction between two Americas , one white and one Black .
The former was a society “ overflowing with the milk of prosperity and the honey of opportunity.
” As for the latter , it was but an @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of a vast ocean of material prosperity.
” In essence , as King noted , it has historically been easier to guarantee freedom without equal citizenship : Was the absence of slavery itself freedom ?
The promise of the June 19 proclamation that freedom meant , in part , “ an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves ” remains unfulfilled .
If , as W.E.B Du Bois lamented in 1903 , the problem of the 20th century was the problem of the color line , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Black middle class blurred the lines along the axis of political economy .
For what it ’ s worth , blurred lines often denote mirages .
Today ’ s racialized socioeconomic structures mask an effort to speed up neoliberal multiculturalism without gauging the past for what it is .
Meanwhile , racial injustices continue to permeate the civic and political fabric of American life .
Here , then , is the problem of the 21st century : the smokescreen of diversity and progress in so-called “ race relations ” in a political economy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ severed from racism .
In the 1990s , President Bill Clinton dog-whistled to various cadres of white Americans that he could assuage their racial anxieties by “ ending welfare as we know it.
” In other words , he pulled the rug from under Black families whose heads of household had been vilified as welfare queens , just after he had taken their votes .
He added insult to injury when he adapted draconian sentencing laws that further emboldened state-sponsored police brutality .
Taken from their homes , incarcerated Black men disappeared at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ where a million African American men became missing fathers , brothers , and sons in absentia .
The logical conclusion of those policies was clear from the outset : economic , political , and social capital disfranchisement .
But their full consequences would not be heard or seen until Black Lives Matter , the movement founded in 2013 by three Black women , Patrisse Khan-Cullors , Alicia Garza , and Opal Tometi , articulated that pain , frustration , and anger precisely .
Ironically , it finally took place during the moment that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Office .
In spite of several movements for civil rights in the past century , we find ourselves back where we started : people of African descent continue to insist on the inherent humanity of Black lives while remaining squeezed between a self-serving narrative of liberal multiculturalism and an emerging white nationalist movement .
Ever since Reconstruction , African American pursuits of civil rights have been fixed in the endeavors—legal , political , and economic—to achieve what is seemingly and ideologically American , but increasingly unattainable : that is , to abolish the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ American humanity and citizenship .
For the Black community , the anger and bitterness at the unrestrained police violence , racist abuse , and racially motivated murder have tested their patience , not least because the same words spoken by Douglass on July 4 , 1852 , still ring true on July 4 , 2020 : This year , an American majority felt the promise of Juneteenth for the first time .
Perhaps it will be forced to discover the travesty of Independence Day , too .

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On June 19, 1865, the news of emancipation finally reached Galveston, Texas. On that day, the crack of the master’s whip would no longer be sanctioned by the laws of the United States. Exercising the powers vested in him by President Lincoln, Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger, along with more than 1,800 federal troops, marched into Galveston to announce General Order Number 3. Addressed to the “The people of Texas,” the order set out Granger’s task: to enforce the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863.
It was nearly two months after the end of the Civil War when freedom for the remaining enslaved persons in the deepest parts of the South, and the United States more generally, was confirmed. In plain language, the General read the order to the now freed population:
In accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor.
Thus, a full two years after the Emancipation Proclamation was issued, freedom for African Americans in the farthest corners of the American slave empire was conferred on the approximately 250,000 enslaved men, women and children in Texas who had been unaware of their already existing freedom. Six months later, in December of 1865, the 13th Amendment was ratified. Juneteenth is reasonably one of the most important, if not the most significant, dates in the American calendar for African Americans. From the archives “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” by Frederick Douglass Dave Zirin
But shortly following it on the calendar is its counterpart. Thirteen years before the first Juneteenth, Frederick Douglass delivered his famous oration, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July.” The speech proved remarkably prescient, lamenting the impossibility of freedom before Emancipation. The Fourth of July was primarily a white people’s birthday. “The freedom gained is yours; and you, therefore, may properly celebrate this anniversary,” he said. “The Fourth of July is the first great fact in your nation’s history.”
“Oppression,” said Douglass, quoting from Ecclesiastes, “makes a wise man mad.” And for this reason, he understood the significance of the Fourth of July for European Americans. The founding fathers, he argued, were wise men for rebelling and overthrowing the yoke of British colonization, and “if they did not go mad, they became restive under this treatment.” In 2020, after Black Americans have commemorated the 155th Juneteenth, it bears remarking that the nation’s continued degradation of Black humanity has driven Black America mad enough to ignite yet again another rebellion. In its wake, the Fourth of July arrives with an indignity that, to some, may have hitherto gone unnoticed. 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 A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life 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 A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life Chris Lehmann
The rebellion began on another national holiday: Memorial Day, May 25. As thousands of Black Americans are dying from Covid-19, the police in Minneapolis killed George Floyd, an unarmed 46-year-old African American man. The ensuing national uprising in response to his brutal murder has generated great gestures of multiracial solidarity. Even the whitest states in the country, including Montana, Idaho, Vermont, and Maine, have seen thousands of concerned Americans protesting. From Minneapolis to New York, from Boston to Berlin, from Chicago to Paris, and from Los Angeles to London, one thing is clear: We are confronted with a time of calls for transformative changes. Across the United States, the city streets have filled with young, multiracial crowds in what has become the largest uprising since the Los Angeles riots of 1992. Current Issue View our current issue
In one of its more symbolic shows of force yet, the rebellion has offended the racist sensibilities of President Donald Trump, who threatened to unleash the slavery-era Insurrection Act of 1807. It is fitting that the president should invoke his powers to suppress what he believes is an insurrectionary force. As the late historian Ira Berlin argued, the long history of the Black freedom struggle against white supremacy was, at every turn, a bloody effort against the tradition of anti-Black violence. “Slavery everywhere had begun in violence, rested on violence, and nearly always ended in violence,” he wrote in The Long Emancipation.
As Douglass remarked, on that July 4, the hypocrisy of American racism was ritualized into a national holiday. Year after year, African Americans were invited to the “grand illuminated temple of liberty,” and called to join in joyous anthems of freedom that served to remind them of the “sad sense of the disparity between us.” The majority of white Americans ignored the fact of the “inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony” encoded in the symbolism of the Fourth of July for Black Americans. “Above your national, tumultuous joy,” said Douglass, “I hear the mournful wail of millions! whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are, today, rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach them.” For without systemic slavery, the invention of the United States would have almost been unthinkable.
Before the Civil War, the general popular opinion of white Americans agreed with the Supreme Court’s 1857 Dred Scott decision, marking Black people as “beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race either in social or political relations.” Black people, the court argued, “are not included, and were not intended to be included, under the word ‘citizens’ in the Constitution, and can therefore claim none of the rights and privileges which that instrument provides for and secures to citizens of the United States.” For the court, this logic was an axiom of American nationalism.
A few years after this opinion was announced, Douglass noted that the United States failed to uphold its promise, because “the Declaration of Independence had been found impracticable; the Constitution had been found impracticable.” This impracticability pointed to the founding fathers, whom the Court credited with having created a national body in which Black men and women “were not intended to be embraced in this new political family which the Constitution brought into existence, but were intended to be excluded from it.” In other words, the protections, immunities and privileges of US citizenship, per the Court’s historical reading, were designated by and for white people.
The Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 was the first step toward reimagining American democracy from its otherwise white supremacist order. Lincoln declared that “all persons held as slaves” within the Confederate states “are, and henceforward shall be free.” In the decade that followed, Radical Republicans tried to delineate the basic human rights of African Americans by first replacing the lash with contractual relations, and severing the master’s authority over the working lives of Black people. Nevertheless, beyond de jure freedom, one question remained: Were Black men and women entitled to citizenship? One congressman, John Henderson of Mississippi, argued against anything more than emancipation. “In passing this amendment we do not confer upon the negro the right to vote,” he said. “We give him no right except his freedom, and leave the rest to the States.” This fateful decision reflected the consensus of the political view of the majority of white Americans, North and South.
The economic experience of African Americans proves the adage that wealth is never destroyed, it is merely transformed or redistributed. Indeed, the redistributive transfer of wealth extracted from Black bodies and deposited onto white coffers is the transnational story of people of African descent in the Americas. When slavery ended in the British Caribbean in 1833, the United Kingdom distributed £20 million to slaveholders as compensation. The British were merely following the example of France, who leveled an indemnity of 25 million francs against Haiti in 1825 as punitive reparations against Africans for overthrowing French slavocracy. In the United States, the District of Columbia Compensated Emancipation Act, which ended slavery in the nation’s capital in 1862, paid slaveholders up to $300 for each enslaved person they manumitted. In the same vein, freed persons and their families were offered $100, consistent with a colonization plan by the federal government to facilitate sea passage to Haiti or Liberia in order to encourage self-exile to other lands.
In the end, the District of Columbia Compensated Emancipation Act freed some 3,000 enslaved persons, but not under the conditions of their own making. Hence, the first federal statute to abolish slavery as an institution just as immediately moved to affirm the denigration of Black life, in conceding that masters possessed property claims on the human lives they had held in captivity for generations. In all three cases, masters were rewarded handsomely with reparative compensations. The wealth that was created by Black labor, and for which Black lives were exploited by capital extraction, trickled upward to masters while leaving the victims of slavery’s capitalism with no restorative recourse for recuperating the incalculable sums of wealth production. To this day, the global descendants of the enslaved received nothing.
“Heretofore the negro had been regarded only as the means of putting money in the white man’s pocket, like a bale of cotton,” said Douglass. By one calculation, the estimated value of the unpaid labor performed by enslaved African Americans from 1619 to 1865, compounded at 6 percent interest through 2016, is $150,735,000,000,000. This gargantuan number suggests the execution of reparative justice in the form of a nationwide financial reparations would far exceed the capacity of the nation to pay. One hundred and fifty years after the Civil War, a quarter of people of African descent live in poverty. Freedom in the 21st century is underscored by a median wealth of $142,000 per white family and $11,000 for Black families. These facts accentuate the shortcoming of the historical legacy of Union victory: that the abolition of slavery did not sever white supremacy from the fundamental core of American political economy.
The culmination of the antislavery struggle came into fruition through the gains of the Reconstruction Amendments—the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments, which granted African Americans birthright citizenship, suffrage, and protection under the law. Black men and women, as one Radical Republican put it, would have had “the right to till the soil, to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow, and to enjoy the rewards of his labor.” However, between the end of Reconstruction in 1877 and the dawn of the 20th century, the retrenchment of Black economic citizenship was well underway.
As former slaves left their conditions of servitude behind, they entered a world of hollow and partial freedoms, where the true prospect for succeeding outside of slavery was not so much augmented by the ballot box as it was undermined by deprivation of the basic necessities of life—food, public health, shelter—and, most important of all, land. A former slave from South Carolina, James Johnson, shed light on this reality when he remarked, “I feels and knows dat de years after de war was worser than befo.” Not only was the nation unprepared to deal with the challenges posed by the new citizenship bestowed on the freedmen and -women, in the words of one ex-slave, Houston Hartsfield Holloway, it disregarded their circumstances: “For we colored people did not know how to be free and the white people did not know how to have a free colored person about them.” As far as the freedmen and -women were concerned, perhaps the most urgent questions were not whether to be free and independent but what kind of freedom and under what conditions.
Centuries of the political economy of slavery gave way to the structural violence of institutionalized racism as an American way of life. As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. observed, almost a century after emancipation, “The American Negro finds himself living in a triple ghetto. A ghetto of race, a ghetto of poverty, a ghetto of human misery.” Unlike slavery, which contained overt systems of economic, social and political exploitation, a ghettoized freedom is a more elusive and covert concept. It hides oppressive conditions in spite of legal guarantees.
In a sense, descendants of enslaved Americans have always known that political emancipation without economic decency was an empty promise. That is why King insisted on the contradistinction between two Americas, one white and one Black. The former was a society “overflowing with the milk of prosperity and the honey of opportunity.” As for the latter, it was but an “island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity.” In essence, as King noted, it has historically been easier to guarantee freedom without equal citizenship:
It’s more difficult today because we are struggling now for genuine equality. It’s much easier to integrate a lunch counter than it is to guarantee a livable income and a good solid job. It’s much easier to guarantee the right to vote than it is to guarantee the right to live in sanitary, decent housing conditions. It is much easier to integrate a public park than it is to make genuine, quality, integrated education a reality.
Was the absence of slavery itself freedom? The promise of the June 19 proclamation that freedom meant, in part, “an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves” remains unfulfilled.
If, as W.E.B Du Bois lamented in 1903, the problem of the 20th century was the problem of the color line, then the mid-century rise of the new Black middle class blurred the lines along the axis of political economy. For what it’s worth, blurred lines often denote mirages. Today’s racialized socioeconomic structures mask an effort to speed up neoliberal multiculturalism without gauging the past for what it is. Meanwhile, racial injustices continue to permeate the civic and political fabric of American life. Here, then, is the problem of the 21st century: the smokescreen of diversity and progress in so-called “race relations” in a political economy that was never, in fact, severed from racism.
In the 1990s, President Bill Clinton dog-whistled to various cadres of white Americans that he could assuage their racial anxieties by “ending welfare as we know it.” In other words, he pulled the rug from under Black families whose heads of household had been vilified as welfare queens, just after he had taken their votes. He added insult to injury when he adapted draconian sentencing laws that further emboldened state-sponsored police brutality. Taken from their homes, incarcerated Black men disappeared at alarming rates, which created hollow communities where a million African American men became missing fathers, brothers, and sons in absentia. The logical conclusion of those policies was clear from the outset: economic, political, and social capital disfranchisement. But their full consequences would not be heard or seen until Black Lives Matter, the movement founded in 2013 by three Black women, Patrisse Khan-Cullors, Alicia Garza, and Opal Tometi, articulated that pain, frustration, and anger precisely. Ironically, it finally took place during the moment that an African American president occupied the Executive Office.
In spite of several movements for civil rights in the past century, we find ourselves back where we started: people of African descent continue to insist on the inherent humanity of Black lives while remaining squeezed between a self-serving narrative of liberal multiculturalism and an emerging white nationalist movement. Ever since Reconstruction, African American pursuits of civil rights have been fixed in the endeavors—legal, political, and economic—to achieve what is seemingly and ideologically American, but increasingly unattainable: that is, to abolish the racialized economic construction of Blackness from African American humanity and citizenship.
For the Black community, the anger and bitterness at the unrestrained police violence, racist abuse, and racially motivated murder have tested their patience, not least because the same words spoken by Douglass on July 4, 1852, still ring true on July 4, 2020:
The character and conduct of this nation never looked blacker to me than on this 4th of July! Whether we turn to the declarations of the past, or to the professions of the present, the conduct of the nation seems equally hideous and revolting. America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future.
This year, an American majority felt the promise of Juneteenth for the first time. Perhaps it will be forced to discover the travesty of Independence Day, too.