The area had been designated as a safe zone and as a result was densely populated with patients as well as refugees who had set up camps around the hospital. Shaban’s story gained widespread attention when a video began to circulate online of him trapped in his hospital bed by the IV drip to which he was connected while trying to get out and burning alive. Shaban’s mother was also burned alive in the fire. Shaban’s younger siblings and father survived but were severely burned in the attack. A few days after the attack, on October 17, 2024, Shaban’s younger brother, 11-year old, Abdul Rahman al-Dalou, died after succumbing to his severe burns. [10/21/24 Update:Farah al-Dalou dies in hospital days after her brother Sha’ban al-Dalou burned to death.]
Shaban al-Dalou (2004-2024) “He was a hafiz. I pray Allah made the fire ‘cool’ and ‘peaceful’ for him, like he made it for the prophet Ibrāhīm when he was thrown into the raging fire. Ameen.”
– Mossun Riaz
Green Party vice presidential candidate Butch Ware referenced the death of Shaban al-Dalou in a recent campaign speech. He said we should be outraged by the video footage of this young man being burnt alive, but noteed that there’s a difference between outrage (a response that has the potential to propel us forward in constructive ways) and rage (a reaction closely associated with momentary anger and fury).
Ware also talked about the importance of cultivating an inner life of groundedness in love so as to model and embody a society “built in love and abundance and prosperity and goodness, and honoring that which makes us unique and distinct, while also honoring that which we all share in our basic humanity.”
It’s an inspiring call to action, to be sure. And one sparked by outrage over Shaban al-Dalou’s death and the many other atrocities and horrors we see on a daily basis as the Israeli government continues its genocidal assault on Gaza.
It is of the upmost importance that we root ourselves in our meditative traditions, our spiritual traditions, our ancestral traditions. If we do not understand that we are going undergoing cosmic harm as a human family every single hour that this genocide drags on, then our hearts are asleep. This is a kind of cosmic warfare against the human spirit itself. Lean on each other. Love one another. What is really going to get us free is love.
. . . The reality is that in our movement space right now, we have a lot of people who have been traumatized and harmed by white supremacy and are still unhealed. And so we move in the space from a place of anger and rage and fury and even hatred. And we think that this is contructive of something. We must as a community learn to cultivate in our inner beings a distinction between outrage and rage. Outrage, that which propels us forward. We should be outraged when we see such images [of Palestinian people being burnt alive]. Our hearts should bleed and our eyes should weep for the suffering of our brothers and sisters in humanity.
But instead of simply venting that anger and frustration with momentary expression, a moment of anger, let it simmer, let it cook. Cultivate that outrage. Live in that space where you live for your brother and sister in humanity, to stop harm from reaching them.
Hurt people hurt people, and we have a lot of unhealed people in the space. Take care of one another. Connect with the resources of your own tradition. Because the most important thing that we can be thinking about now, if we know all empires fall, is What will replace it? What are we planning to construct? What are we going to build? Are we going to see one another through the revolution with care, with love, with empathy, with community, with solidarity? Because if we are then that has to start in the revolutionary struggle itself. It will not come if it waits till freedom day. Because [if we don’t start it in the struggle itself] we will build patterns and institutional structures that wire our brokenness into them. We will become the next oppressor. We will become the next imperialist if we do not engage in this radical act of love, this radical act of solidarity.
This is a tragic, heartbreaking moment in the history of humanity. But I believe that we will look back on this tragic and heartbreaking moment as the beginning of a new age in human history. With God as my witness, we have everything that we need for all of us to live an existence of prosperity and abundance.
If we had spent the last 40 years trying to maximize benefit instead of trying to maximize profit, human beings would be working about two hours a day, right now, all of us, across the whole planet; and everybody would have what they need to eat. If we actually model the society we want to build, one that is built in love and abundance and prosperity and goodness, and honoring that which makes us unique and distinct, while also honoring that which we all share in our basic humanity, then I know that freedom is coming. Freedom is promised. And may we be alive to see it. May we be the instruments that deliver it. May our children grow and flourish in it.
Green Party presidential candidate Dr. Jill Stein was in the Twin Cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis yesterday for a number of campaign events, including a fundraising dinner in south Minneapolis hosted by the Green Party of Minnesota.
Earlier, Dr. Stein attended the weekly anti-genocide vigil at the intersection of Summit and Snelling in St. Paul, where I had the chance to briefly meet and talk with her. Also present was my friend Christine, mother of Stein’s running mate, Butch Ware.
Yesterday at The Wild Reed, I explored the Democratic Party’s panic about – and blacklash to – Jill Stein and her presidential run. One issue I highlighted in this exploration was Green Party surrogate Kshama Sawant’s recent comments that the Green Party can’t win the presidency but could secure another victory: denying Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris Michigan and thus potentially the White House.
I shared in yesterday’s post Butch Ware's response to Sawant’s comments. Today I share Jill Stein’s response, which she shared yesterday on the Due Dissidence podcast.
The moves of a desperate party
and a losing campaign? I guess
the Democrats’ internal polls
must be devastating.
The Democratic Party’s ongoing efforts to smear Green Party presidential candidate Dr. Jill Stein continue to backfire spectacularly.
First it was Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s cringe attack video against Stein and the scathing backlash it received. Since then various other Democratic “vote Blue no matter who” sycophants have been furiously tweeting and penning smear pieces, including a recent op-ed by Thom Hartmann over at Common Dreams. Somehow, though, I don’t think Hartmann expected the barrage of critical responses he received from readers of this would-be “progressive” platform. You can peruse these responses here or check out the following sampling.
• The Democrats made their bed and now they can die in it. They had a choice of catering to the Cheney voters or to the Stein voters and they chose wrong. There are no “progressives” left in the un-Democratic Party. Don’t blame Jill Stein and those of us who support her for the Democrats’ immorality. No party that condones genocide should receive anyone’s vote. Harris could still change course and call for a cut-off of weapons to Israel. She could call for Medicare for All. She could call for removing the Social Security cap. She could call for an end of using federal land for oil and gas production. She could call for massive cuts in the military budget. She could call for an end to ALL wars, coups, and sanctions. But she won’t. That Democratic Party died a long time ago. It’s not the Greens who murdered it, Thom; the Democrats committed suicide. Don’t blame Jill Stein for that!
• Right now, progressives are totally unrepresented. There was a time the Democrats welcomed progressives. Those days are long gone. Democrats now use the Schumer strategy which reasons they’ll gain more votes by moving right than they’ll lose. If that’s true, they should STFU when progressives vote third party. The Democrats have become the party of Cheney. They can whine all they like about losing votes to the Greens but they are the sole reason this is happening. They have no one to blame but themselves.
• It’s flippin’ right in the dang article! . . . “There’s a fair amount of data now that suggests the Democrats have lost. Unless they give up their genocide.” Yet it is the Green Party’s fault they are working to build a coalition with people who are against genocide? As [Green Party vice presidential candidate] Dr. Butch Ware said in an interview, “Would a Jewish person vote for the Nazi Party?” These people aren’t voting for the Democratic Party because of the Dem’s own actions!
• The fact people can and have voted for Jill Stein as president disproves [Hartmann’s] claim that the system cannot have more then two parties by design. That she cannot garner more then a small percentage of votes is on the voter and has people like Hartmann as an underlying cause when he suggests the world will end unless people vote for the Party he backs. Hartmann and the mainstream media is part of the problem even as he points fingers elsewhere.
• I’ll be the first to say Jill Stein will not win. That being said, she didn’t cost Hillary Clinton the 2016 election. . . . In my state of Michigan, Harris should try harder to get Arab American votes by breaking away from Biden on Israel. Or don’t and lose. It’s really her choice. Nobody can cause you to lose but yourself in an election.
• Common Dreams has every right to publish whatever point of view they choose. Thom Hartman has/had a rather large following, so it probably wouldn’t have made sense, as an entity seeking to gain/keep readership, for them to push back before accepting the level of vitriol in this article. But as a long time reader, and with an awareness that electoral politics isn’t the route to achieving the changes many of Common Dreams’ readers would like to see, especially in the area of U.S. imperialism, I have to say I am very disappointed to read this type of article here. It certainly got my attention and inspired me to act, but probably not in the way the author and publisher intended. I will very likely vote for Jill Stein for President of the United Stares, and stop reading Common Dreams, for all the excellent articles their staff writes, until they stop publishing Democratic Party propaganda.
• Whatever her motive might be, and propagandists like Thom Hartmann would assume to know, Jill Stein is telling the truth, far more than Harris, Biden, Blinken, Sullivan or Trump would tell. Of course, partisan pride precludes acknowledging that your party is now the party of George W. Bush, stoking conflicts around the globe and working directly against the public interest. When your presidential nominee is anointed and is “proud” to receive an endorsement from Dick Cheney, it should trigger reflection as to why your party has become so desperate and what you are doing making excuses for right-wing warmongers.
An important endorsement
Of course, what’s fueling the panic of the Democratic establishment and its media lackeys is the rising support that Jill Stein and the Green Party are receiving from Muslim voters in key swing states, including Michigan (right).
As podcaster Sabrina Salvati highlights in the 20-minute video below, this is an important development not just for the Stein/Ware campaign but for third parties in general.
At this point I should note that from here on out I’m going to refer to “third parties” as independent parties. I do so after hearing Green Party vice presidential candidate Butch Ware say in Minneapolis last month that “independent parties” is a better term as it speaks to how the Green Party is independent of corporate funding and thus control. Another term to describe this type of party is “people-powered,” as they are funded and supported by citizens, “the people,” not corporations.
A progressive Democrat weighs-in
Ths past weekend (October 12-13) the Democratic Party released a Kamala Harris-approved attack ad against Jill Stein. According to Jaime Harrison, head of the Democratic National Committee, it’s the first time the party has released an ad focused on a third party. The crux of the ad is that a vote for Jill Stein is the same thing as a vote for Donald Trump.
On an October 14 segment of the podcast Rising, progressive Democrat Nina Turner weighed-in on her party’s attack ad against Stein. From my perspective, Turner’s response is the sanest way for Democrats to respond to the reality of the presidential campaign of Jill Stein and of the presence of independent parties on the political landscape in general.
Turner’s wise words and the mere existence of the Democrats’ attack ad against Stein raises questions for me. First, is such an ad warranted? By this I mean is Stein really the reason for Harris’ loss of momentum and underperformance with key demographics? Is there a better, more productive focus for the Harris campaign than targeting an alternative party candidate? Maybe Harris should work on distinguishing herself more forcefully from the unpopular Biden and his policies (from Gaza to the economy), or maybe she could start campaigning with progressive Democrats and independents like Nina Turner and Bernie Sanders rather than neo-con Republicans like Liz Cheney.
Following is the 6-minute Rising segment featuring Nina Turner sharing her thoughts of the Democrats’ Stein-focused attack ad.
An “epic lib meltdown”
A recent insident that has caused some controversy and raised the ire of some Democrats is a speech that Green Party surrogate Kshama Sawant delivered at a camapign event earlier this month. In her speech, Sawant said that the Green Party can’t win the presidency but could secure another victory: denying Kamala Harris Michigan and thus the White House.
In the following 20-minute segment of the Due Dissidence podcast, hosts Keaton Weiss and Russell Dobula offer insightful commentary and analysis of Sawant’s remarks and the “epic lib meltdown” that followed.
Butch Ware in Minneapolis: “I got into this fight to win it”
I mentioned that Green Party vice presidential candidate Butch Ware was in the Twin Cities last month. He was here again for a number of events this past Monday (October 14) and I went and heard him speak at May Day Books (right), located just blocks from my home in south Minneapolis.
Ware also gave an interview on Monday to the JENerational Change podcast in which he responded to Green Party surrogate Kshama Sawant’s recent controversial comments. It’s a very worthwhile 10-minute interview, and I find Ware to be a very informed and inspiring speaker. Interestingly, he doesn’t view himself as a “politician” but rather a public servant.
Says Ware:
I got into this fight to win it, and I take great exception to Sawant speaking as a surrogate for the Green Party and saying we are not in position to win. I told her that at a [subsequent] campaign event and [I also told her that her statement was] a mistake that I do not wish to see repeated. . . . I understand that the odds are long, but there’s a certain group of leftists who have been battered by their experience with the Democrats and now have internalized some colonial mentalities, and they’re essentially lowering their aspirations. That would be my biggest critique of the so-call left, that they’re just happy to be on the field. And I ain’t built like that at all. . . . I’m not in this to be a spoiler. . . . I’m in it to win. . . . So that attitude that Sawant is displaying in not a realistic attitude; it’s a defeatist attitude and I reject it utterly.
In his article, Wilson suggests we consider the late soul singer Sharon Jones (right) as “American fascism’s first casualty.” Wikipediaprovides the following context for thinking this.
[Jones] suffered a stroke while watching the 2016 United States presidential election results and another the following day. She remained alert and lucid during the initial period of her hospital stay, claiming light-heartedly that the news of Donald Trump’s victory was responsible for her stroke. Jones died on November 18, 2016, in Cooperstown, New York, aged 60.
Serious truths are often cloaked in light-heartedness, and Wilson sees in Jones’ “light-hearted” linking of her stroke with Trump’s election the reality that with Donald Trump’s electoral college victory “an awful world . . . suddenly morphed into something improbably worse.” He supports this claim, in part, by reminding us how in the wake of Trump’s win “suicide hotlines everywhere received a glut of anxious calls.”
Wilson then speculates on (and laments) the “Trump death cult” in its potential 2025 version: “The anticipated, murderous orgy of roundups, mass transfers to concentration camps and deportations of those without legal status. . . . [T]he obliteration of public mental well being.” In relation to the latter, Wilson writes: “We should all anticipate the racing heart rates, the suicides, the spiking blood pressures, the strokes and heart attacks as the soul of the American people is mobilized for mere survival” if Trump is once again elected.
Following is an excerpt from Wilson’s article.
_______________
On the night of November 8th, 2016, the greatest soul singer of all suffered a stroke while watching the presidential election returns. Sharon Jones had, by virtue of her legendary talent, achieved fame despite “some record label” telling her that she was “too short, too fat, Black and old.” Jones had one thing going for her – a voice so powerful, subtle and inhumanly flexible that she had no peer in a professional niche blessed with a ridiculous abundance of magnificent singers. She sang in harmony with world class horn players, but Sharon Jones’ voice could soar and shame trumpets and saxophones. The brassy, tensile fierceness of her singing sometimes resolved into a whisper – like a virtuoso flautist drifting into silence.
Sharon Jones had held pancreatic cancer to a draw for several rounds, but metastatic cancer was one thing, and Trump’s electoral college victory another. One easily imagines that Sharon Jones, the triumphant conqueror of a heartless music industry, came face to face with a terrifying and immovable barrier – the entire world had been swept into an inescapable vortex. I am not simply speculating – Jones’ election night stroke did not kill her on the spot. She died ten days later, but not before identifying her assailant to her friends and bandmates. It was Donald Trump.
Sharon Jones death provides something of a blank slate – a place for the projection of our own anxiety. She may arguably be the first person to pass through the invisible threshold separating the misery and dislocation of life in neoliberal America from the fascist uncertainty to follow. You might think of her as American fascism’s first casualty.
We can only speculate about what she endured on November 8th eight years ago, as we prepare to relive her trauma in a few weeks. Sharon Jones, because she did not meet the superficial standards – the image – of a peerless singer, once worked a day job. Before she achieved the big time she supported herself by working at the “correctional facility” on Rikers Island. Did she anticipate that Donald Trump would turn all of creation into an enormous Rikers Island? Sharon Jones, as both a legendary singer and a former prison guard (in one of the most notorious outposts within the prison industrial complex) had access to the whole continuum of human curses and virtues.
She only stood 4’11” but somehow survived the proximity of men at their worst. She must have seen beatings, threats, blood and humiliation until it all congealed into an existential blur. Rikers Island might have hardened Sharon Jones’ heart like a stone, but it did not. When Trump’s apparition came to her on November 8th she might have stared him down like he was just one more Rikers inmate. We know that Sharon Jones had a full range of human emotions and vulnerabilities. You can hear it in her voice, and we know her story. Trump and death converged, and she went with them before anyone else.
But it wasn’t just Sharon Jones – a suicide hotline serving the LGBTQ community experienced an enormous spike in calls on November 8th, 2016 as the election results imposed a cascading profusion of fearful thoughts. An awful world had suddenly morphed into something improbably worse. Millions of the most ordinary people looked into the abyss eight years ago – suicide hotlines everywhere received a glut of anxious calls. I am not Black, not gay, not Trans, not Central American, not poor, and not at all a supporter of Hillary “neoliberal stooge” Clinton, but my wife and I stared with stricken, numbed, abrupt distress at the 2016 computer screen. A nation that had been destined to drift toward fascism since a collection of white, male slave-owners signed The Declaration of Independence had bizarrely been shocked at how quickly it finally happened.
As a mental health outreach worker in small town Franklin County, Massachusetts, I expected that my poor clients (Franklin County is a collection of mostly decaying mill towns) would have responded to Trump’s 2016 victory with barely an indifferent shrug, but I was wrong. Poor people generally believe that voting is a waste of time – they rather conclude that no nexus exists to connect their struggles with the political theatrics that occasionally murmur as background noise on their TV screens.
. . . Neoliberalism has conditioned us to accept abraded environmental protections, minimal health care, defunded schools, human rights abuses, horrific military violence inflicted far away and supported by local propaganda, arbitrary police power, and expanding, privatized prisons. But fascism adds something new – the performance of violence as a public spectacle. George Monbiot has deemed both neoliberalism and fascism as corporate responses to the problem of democracy. A society driven by the collective power of the public will inevitably collide with corporate hegemony. Whereas neoliberalism depends on an oblivious citizenry, lobotomized by the surgical blade of corporate media, fascists have less faith in brain washing alone. Fascism requires a stronger incentive for public obedience – naked fear.
It is as likely as not that Trump will be president within a few months. On election night there will be strokes, heart attacks and suicides in the wake of Trump’s election as people anticipate the expansion of Trump’s fascist death cult. Last time Trump occupied the throne, suicides spiked to unprecedented levels in 2017 and 2018. Fascism will unleash a mental health catastrophe. Obviously, the most targeted victims, sexual minorities and people without U.S. citizenship, or citizens related to those without citizenship, will be overwhelmed with anxiety.
Paradoxically, Trump’s own base will be prominent death cult victims. White men living in rural areas kill themselves at a rate higher than any other demographic, and more often than not they employ an iconic symbol of Republican Party violence – fire arms. We never know if deaths of despair involve a disproportionate contingent of Trump’s acolytes, but the COVID contrarian death event that claimed hundreds of thousands of lives defined Trump’s legacy. A death cult propaganda empire, largely funded by the oil industry (that lost profits during Covid-19 economic slowdowns) urged the public to fight back against the “emasculating” decrees of public health agencies. Research conducted by Dr. Ryon McDermott, a psychiatrist from South Alabama has linked anti-vax beliefs to fanatic masculine tropes: “What we find is that men who endorse these beliefs are much less likely to engage in proactive health behaviors, like getting a vaccine, because it’s somehow seen as being feminine, or being weak.”
Dan Patrick, the elderly lieutenant governor of Texas, said the quiet part out loud during a COVID spike when he offered himself, and all elderly people, as a sacrifice to the greater cause of the U.S. economy. His COVID death would be well worth the economic benefits, he argued. Patrick’s alleged bravery was nothing more than narcissistic prancing. But the strident, bellicose, confrontational display of performative anti-vax voices on social media demonstrated that macho contempt for the “decadent,” fearful, feminine voices of public health drove the movement. Picture Donald Trump, the bone spur, draft dodger of the Vietnam War era, preening without a mask and boasting about it. Trump, the bone spur coward had achieved death cult redemption via Covid-19.
. . . It may not be easy to accurately imagine all the details of the Trump death cult in its enhanced 2025 version. To be sure, some of the horrors seem almost certain – the continued Gazan genocide with the Democratic Party blessing for instance. Then there is the anticipated, murderous orgy of roundups, mass transfers to concentration camps and deportations of those without legal status. This will, in and of itself, meet the criterion for genocide. But the most critical consequence will be the obliteration of public mental well being. We should all anticipate the racing heart rates, the suicides, the spiking blood pressures, the strokes and heart attacks as the soul of the American people is mobilized for mere survival.
The public is the last barrier between the U.S. military machine and a dead Gaza. We are the last stand to turn back a planned extermination of our “undocumented” people. That may sound rather dramatic, as we don’t yet know if we can even save ourselves. We would be in slightly better shape if Sharon Jones’ voice still provided refuge. It doesn’t, and she was only the first to fall.
To read Phil Wilson’s article in its entirety, click here.
I spent the afternoon with my friend Adnan, and took the above photo of him with the beautiful winged heart wall ornament that my friend Kate gifted me with when we visited northern Wisconsin this past summer.
Following is what author Toby Johnson says about the winged heart, symbol for the mystical path of the Sufi.
The symbol of the Sufis is a winged heart. Sufism is not a way of the head but of the heart. The way to fly to God is to open the heart, to be human and to love and offer life in service to God and to others. The primary mystical teaching of Sufism is contained in the Sufi interpretation of the Islamic credo La Ilaha El Allah Hu. What most Muslims interpret as a declaration of monotheism, “There is no God but Allah,” the Sufis understand as a revelation of ultimate unity: “There is no reality but God.” To remind themselves of the implications of this, Sufis sometimes greet one another with Ya Azim: “How wonderfully God manifests to me through you.”
In the October 10 issue of In These Times, Miles Kampf-Lassin has a piece titled “The Warning Signs for Kamala Harris’s Campaign Are Flashing Red.”
When this article was reprinted on the Common Dreams platform, it was re-titled “Kamala Harris Must Correct Course Before She Blows This Election” . . . something many of us have been saying for some time now.
Following is an excerpt from Kampf-Lassin’s article.
_______________
Trump is a uniquely flawed candidate and his dismal record in office is easy to excoriate, as Harris demonstrated during the September debate. His presidency showered the rich with tax cuts, squeezed working people, offshored jobs, terrorized immigrant communities and failed to respond to a pandemic that led to mass preventable death and turned the economy upside down. The Supreme Court justices he appointed have curtailed reproductive rights and targeted the entire regulatory apparatus. And the far Right’s Project 2025 playbook promises to roll back decades of progressive reforms, from voting access to LGBTQ rights.
What’s more, Trump has promised a regime of vengeance that would directly target journalists, organizers and anyone considered a political enemy.
Still, Harris has not yet rebuilt the fragile coalition that pushed Biden over the finish line four years ago. Compared with Biden in 2020, polls show Harris underperforming with voters of color, younger voters and seniors – all key for Democrats. And when it comes to lower-income voters and those with less formal education, Harris is being outrun.
A second Trump term would mean economic mayhem for the working class and a disaster for the labor movement. Yet, according to CNN political analyst Harry Enten, “Trump has more working-class support than any GOP presidential candidate in a generation,” while Harris is poised to have the worst Democratic performance among union voters in decades.
Among Arab American voters, support for Harris has cratered as the U.S.-backed genocide in Gaza continues, with Israel expanding its assault into Lebanon. A mid-September poll from the Arab American Institute (AAI) shows that, among likely Arab American voters, Trump leads Harris 46% to 42%, a far cry from 2020, when Biden won nearly 60% support. Many of these voters say the war on Gaza is a top priority – and they could be won over with a change in policy.
In Michigan, home to a significant Arab American population including Palestinian and Lebanese families, internal polling shows Harris is “underwater,” according to Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.). Based on publicly released polls, the state is a toss-up at best. The Uncommitted National Movement, which drew more than 100,000 voters in the Michigan Democratic primary, has refused to endorse Harris due to her continued support of “unconditional weapons” for Israel’s campaign of annihilation. (Hillary Clinton lost Michigan by around 10,000 votes in 2016; Biden won it by 150,000.)
These underlying dynamics should ring alarm bells for a Democratic campaign entering the final stretch of a cardinal race with potentially catastrophic consequences. If Democrats take the authoritarian threat posed by Trump as seriously as they profess, they need to change course in order to cobble together a cross-section of voters who can vault Harris into the Oval Office.
That change should start with promising a shift away from unflinching sponsorship of Israel’s military offensives. Seven in 10 likely voters want to see a ceasefire in Gaza, which will require forcing the hand of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, including by conditioning arms in line with international and U.S. law. Polling from AAI suggests that backing these restrictions would make 56% of Arab American voters more likely to support Harris.
. . . [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu has proven time and again he is unwilling to reach peace; Harris can promise to use U.S. leverage to make him. This move, backed by a majority of Americans, would help make inroads among a vast stratum of voters — including those in Michigan, Wisconsin and other swing states – eager to support the Democratic nominee if the party would simply stop underwriting a genocide. It’s also the morally correct position – tens of thousands of Palestinian women and children have already been slaughtered by American weapons, and the Netanyahu government appears dead set on not just continuing but expanding its onslaught.
On the economy, Harris could depart from her recent approach of cozying-up with crypto financiers and wealthy business interests by instead leaning into the populist, class-war rhetoric and policy planks Democratic voters have responded to in the post-Obama era. Harris has embraced good policies like reviving the expanded child tax credit, building millions of new housing units, continuing to invest in green manufacturing and going after price-gouging companies. But with a majority of the population living paycheck to paycheck, working-class Americans are in desperate need of a bold redistributive agenda that would materially improve their lives right now. Targeting the elites and billionaires is an effective strategy to win over lower income voters, and while Harris has adopted appeals in this direction to acknowledge economic grievances, there’s more runway left to address them.
Harris can take a big swing by doing more to champion the pro-working class policies her party nominally supports—in speeches, ads and voter appeals. Harris could make central in her campaign the extremely popular positions already in the 2024 Democratic Party platform – such as a federal $15 minimum wage; extending Medicare to cover hearing, dental and vision; capping out-of-pocket drug costs while forcing the pharmaceutical industry to lower prices; expanding Social Security; limiting rent increases by corporate landlords; and passing the PRO Act to massively grow union membership.
. . . These progressive realignments by Harris would also help vitalize the get-out-the-vote operations that were pivotal to Biden’s victory four years ago when young voters helped clinch swing states by coming out in droves. This year, youth voter registration is lagging behind 2020, and top Democratic groups are privately fretting that the lack of meaningful outreach to young people of color could cost them the election. In focus groups, younger voters cite concerns about the economy as well as the assault on Gaza as motivating factors in their decision. Compelling them to not just vote but also knock doors, travel to swing states and make calls should be a top priority.
To read Miles Kampf-Lassin’s article in its entirety, click here.
_________________
To close, here’s a related segment from Sabrina Salvati’s October 2 Sabby Sabs podcast. In this segment Salvati examines how Kamala Harris has already lost the Muslim and Arab-American vote and is losing working class voters as well as other demographics.
In the course of this examination, Salvati highlights the panic of the Democratic establishment and its media lackeys to the Green Party presidential candidacy of Jill Stein and her rising support with Muslim voters in key swing states, including Michigan (left).
The Democratic Party has lost the working class because the Democratic Party decided to win over Goldman Sachs, Wall Street, the Ivy League-educated crowd. That’s what they wanted, that’s what they got. How do you let the Republican Party bet you with the working class? This is how sad the Democratic Party has fallen. That’s not Jill Stein’s fault. That’s the Democratic Party’s fault. Rather [than Stein] it’s NAFTA, it’s crushing the railway workers’ strike. Remember, the Teamsters didn’t support either [corporate-backed] party this year.
“This administration has financed a genocide in Gaza for the last year and every day you’re up there denying it,” Cosgrove told Miller before declaring, “People are sick of the bullshit in here, it is a genocide.”
In examining Cosgrove’s confrontation with Miller, Cabello highlights Peter Beinart’s recent appearance on Joy Reid’s MSNBC show The Reidout. Beinart is a political analyst and the author of the forthcoming book Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning. In this segment, Beinart strongly critiques the role of mainstream corporate media and its various personalities in covering the Israeli government’s response to the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel. And he makes these strong critiques on corporate media and to one of its personalities! It’s quite something. . . . As is Cabello’s segment in general, although I realize his style of presentation may not be everyone’s cup of tea.
What Hamas did on October 7 was evil in that it targeted civilians in a really horrifying way. But if you want to fight against that violence, you can’t do it effectively unless you understand that it’s within a larger structure of the violence of oppression. . . . [I]f you believe that all human life is precious, you have to believe that Palestinian life is precious too. Even strategically, if you don’t understand the context in which the October 7 attack happened, if you can’t distinguish between understanding and justifying, which are completely different things, you’re not going to have an effective strategy. And that’s [also] what happened after 9/11. We didn’t have a good strategy for dealing with Iraq and Afghanistan because we didn’t do the right analysis about why in fact those attacks happened.
. . . Good for Kamala Harris for [recently] showing genuine empathy and talking about Palestinians as human beings. But people are not going to take you seriously in that rhetoric if you keep unconditionally providing weapons – the same weapons that are killing people in Gaza and killing people in Lebanon. If these words are going to mean anything, they have to be followed by actions.
I established The Wild Reed in 2006 as a sign of solidarity with all who are dedicated to living lives of integrity – though, in particular, with gay people seeking to be true to both the gift of their sexuality and their Catholic faith. The Wild Reed's original by-line read, “Thoughts and reflections from a progressive, gay, Catholic perspective.” As you can see, it reads differently now. This is because my journey has, in many ways, taken me beyond, or perhaps better still, deeper into the realities that the words “progressive,” “gay,” and “Catholic” seek to describe.
Even though reeds can symbolize frailty, they may also represent the strength found in flexibility. Popular wisdom says that the green reed which bends in the wind is stronger than the mighty oak which breaks in a storm. Tall green reeds are associated with water, fertility, abundance, wealth, and rebirth. The sound of a reed pipe is often considered the voice of a soul pining for God or a lost love.
On September 24, 2012,Michael BaylyofCatholics for Marriage Equality MNwas interviewed by Suzanne Linton of Our World Today about same-sex relationships and why Catholics can vote 'no' on the proposed Minnesota anti-marriage equality amendment.
"I believe your blog to be of utmost importance for all people regardless of their orientation. . . . Thank you for your blog and the care and dedication that you give in bringing the TRUTH to everyone."– William
"Michael, if there is ever a moment in your day or in your life when you feel low and despondent and wonder whether what you are doing is anything worthwhile, think of this: thanks to your writing on the internet, a young man miles away is now willing to embrace life completely and use his talents and passions unashamedly to celebrate God and his creation. Any success I face in the future and any lives I touch would have been made possible thanks to you and your honesty and wisdom."– AB
"Since I discovered your blog I have felt so much more encouraged and inspired knowing that I'm not the only gay guy in the Catholic Church trying to balance my Faith and my sexuality. Continue being a beacon of hope and a guide to the future within our Church!"– Phillip
"Your posts about Catholic issues are always informative and well researched, and I especially appreciate your photography and the personal posts about your own experience. I'm very glad I found your blog and that I've had the chance to get to know you."– Crystal
"Thank you for taking the time to create this fantastic blog. It is so inspiring!"– George
"I cannot claim to be an expert on Catholic blogs, but from what I've seen, The Wild Reed ranks among the very best."– Kevin
"Reading your blog leaves me with the consolation of knowing that the words Catholic, gay and progressive are not mutually exclusive.."– Patrick
"I grieve for the Roman institution’s betrayal of God’s invitation to change. I fear that somewhere in the midst of this denial is a great sin that rests on the shoulders of those who lead and those who passively follow. But knowing that there are voices, voices of the prophets out there gives me hope. Please keep up the good work."– Peter
"I ran across your blog the other day looking for something else. I stopped to look at it and then bookmarked it because you have written some excellent articles that I want to read. I find your writing to be insightful and interesting and I'm looking forward to reading more of it. Keep up the good work. We really, really need sane people with a voice these days."– Jane Gael
"Michael, your site is like water in the desert."– Jayden
