Protesting Weapons Manufacturer and Genocide Enabler General Dynamics

The world’s fifth largest weapons manufacturer, General Dynamics, supplies (via U.S. government arms sales) artillery ammunition and bombs to the far-right Israeli government for its ongoing genocidal assault on Gaza.

Yesterday, Saturday, September 14, I participated in a protest outside of General Dynamics’ Bloomington, MN offices. We gathered both to protest the corporation’s role in genocide and to call on the State of Minnesota to divest our tax dollars from General Dynamics.


General Dynamics’ supply of weapons to Israel has led to protests at facilities in Pittsfield, Massachusetts; Lincoln, Nebraska; Saco, Maine; New London, Connecticut; and Garland, Texas. As in Minnesota, citizens in Maine are calling for an end to state subsidies to the company. Protesters at the New London demonstration compared General Dynamics’ deployment of an Ohio-class submarine to the feature film Oppenheimer. Twenty-three protesters were arrested at the Garland demonstration, in which women wearing hijabs say they were forcibly unveiled by police.

Yesterday’s rally and march in Bloomington, MN was organized by Minnesota Peace Action Coalition and endorsed by MN Free Palestine Coalition, Anti-War Committee, Students For Palestine Normandale, and Women Against Military Madness.

Following is an excerpt from an August 26 Responsible Statecraft article by Stephen Semler, co-founder of the Security Policy Reform Institute, “an independent grassroots think tank that promotes the meaningful reform of U.S. foreign policy to break the cycle of endless war and serve the most pressing economic, social, and political needs of working-class Americans.”

In his article, entitled “Gaza Breakdown: 20 Times Israel Used U.S. Arms in Likely War Crimes,” Semler makes the case that “if the Biden administration is truly concerned about the loss of innocent Palestinian life in Gaza, it can stop Israel’s atrocities by denying it the tools it needs to commit them.”

The Biden administration recently approved five major arms sales to Israel for F-15 fighter aircraft, tank ammunition, tactical vehicles, air-to-air missiles, mortar rounds, and related equipment for each. Though technically sales, most if not all of this matériel is paid for by U.S. taxpayers – Israel uses much of the military aid Congress approves for it effectively as a gift card to buy U.S.-made weapons.

The total value of the five weapons sales exceeds $20.3 billion.

More extraordinary than the price tag of these arms deals is that the White House made them public. Prior to last week’s announcements, it had disclosed just two arms sales to Israel. By March, the Biden administration had already greenlit more than 100 separate weapons deals for Israel, or about one every 36 hours, on average. The administration presumably kept the value of each arms deal “under threshold” to avoid having to notify Congress.

From 2017 to 2019, the U.S. had approved thousands of below-threshold arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates worth a total of $11.2 billion. Exploiting this loophole helped the Trump administration avoid scrutiny of its enabling of a devastating and indiscriminate bombing campaign in Yemen. The Biden administration appears to be following the same playbook for the destruction it is enabling in Gaza.

The White House isn’t shy about publicizing arms transfers to other countries. For example, it has been very transparent about the military aid it sent Ukraine since February 2022. Biden promotes arming Ukraine as industrial policy, marketing the military aid as a boon for domestic manufacturing and jobs. The Pentagon not only itemizes what specific matériel the U.S. sends to Ukraine, but also shows on a map where in the U.S. those weapons and equipment are made.

By contrast, nearly all the publicly available information on U.S. arms transfers to Israel comes from leaks reported by the media. The Biden administration says very little about the weapons it delivers to Israel or how the Israeli military uses them.

. . . [I]nformation gathering and fact finding [relating to how Israel uses the weapons supplied to it by the U.S.] is extremely difficult. Israel restricts U.N. and NGO access to Gaza and doesn’t cooperate with investigations into misuse of U.S.-supplied arms. Members of the press are routinely denied access or attacked: Since October 2023, 116 journalists and media workers have been killed by Israeli airstrikes or sniper fire in Gaza, representing 86 percent of all those killed worldwide, according to data from the Committee to Protect Journalists. Prolonged communication blackouts are commonplace in Gaza.

Israel’s military campaign relies on U.S. weapons, and so U.S. matériel is involved in nearly every facet of Israel’s campaign. For example, Israel uses U.S.-made aircraft like the F-35, F-16, and F-15 to drop U.S.-made bombs, including the MK-84 (2,000 pounds), MK-83 (1,000 pounds), MK-82 (500 pounds), and 250-pound “small diameter” bombs, which can be fitted with U.S.-made Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) guidance kits.

The vast majority of bombs Israel drops on Gaza are U.S.-made. The U.S. even provides Israel with jet fuel. The U.S. has sent so many arms to Israel since October 7 that the Pentagon has struggled to find sufficient cargo aircraft to deliver the matériel.

Israel’s campaign is historically destructive. In the three weeks after October 7, Israel dropped an average of 6,000 bombs on Gaza per week. By comparison, U.S. and coalition forces dropped on average 488 bombs per week on ISIS militants in Iraq and Syria during Operation Inherent Resolve (OIR) between August 2014 and March 2019. OIR caused immense civilian harm – particularly in densely-populated areas like Mosul and Raqqa – but the scale of death and destruction doesn’t come close to what Israel has done in Gaza.

A former high-ranking officer in the Israeli military told Haaretz that Israeli forces could have made as much progress as they have so far in Gaza with one-tenth of the destruction. This “unusually wasteful” and “reckless” conduct “reflects an absolute assumption that the U.S. will continue to arm and finance it,” he is quoted as saying.

What’s more, according to reporting, Israel has used an Artificial Intelligence program called “Lavender” to generate an unprecedented number of bombing targets with minimal human oversight. The AI program is coded with instructions that appear inconsistent with international law and is deployed with little to no human oversight.

The Biden administration acknowledges that Israel likely broke human rights law with U.S.-supplied weapons, but claims it doesn’t have enough evidence to link U.S.-supplied weapons to specific violations that would warrant cutting off military aid to Israel. As national security adviser Jake Sullivan told CBS, “We do not have enough information to reach definitive conclusions about particular incidents or to make legal determinations, but we do have enough information to have concern. . . . Our hearts break about the loss of innocent Palestinian life.”

None of that is believable. . . . [T]here is more than enough available information. If the Biden administration is truly concerned about the loss of innocent Palestinian life in Gaza, it can stop Israel’s atrocities by denying it the tools it needs to commit them.

To read Stephen Semler’s article, “Gaza Breakdown: 20 Times Israel Used U.S. Arms in Likely War Crimes,” in its entirety, click here.

Related Off-site Links:
“Obvious Conflict of Interest”: Report Reveals 50+ U.S. Lawmakers Hold Military Stocks – Brett Wilkins (Common Dreams, September 12, 2024).
Tariq Ali on U.S. and U.K. Arming Israel’s War on Gaza – Democracy Now! (September 10, 2024).
The Military-Industrial Complex Is Killing the American Dream and Hopes for World Peace – William D. Hartung (Responsible Statecraft via Common Dreams, August 24, 2024).
“Incomprehensible”: U.S. Approves $20 Billion in New Arms for Israel as Gaza Death Toll Tops 40,000 – Democracy Now! (August 15, 2024).
Despite Gaza War Crimes Accusations, Biden Sends Israel More 500-Pound Bombs – Brett Wilkins (Common Dreams, July 10, 2024).

UPDATE: Can the World Save Palestinians From US-Israeli Genocide? – Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies (Common Dreams, September 16, 2024).

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• “It’s a Systematic Slaughter That We’re Funding”
• Yousef Munayyer: Quote of the Day – August 30, 2024
• Outrage and Despair
• “This Is a Genocidal Project”
• “A Genocide Has Been Normalized”
• Voices of Reason and Compassion on the Crisis in Israel and Gaza
• More Voices of Reason and Compassion on the Crisis in Israel and Gaza
• Vigiling Against Weaponized Drones
• Award-Winning “Hellraisers” At It Again
• Alliant Action

Black Pumas – “Conjuring New Charms from Familiar Elements”

Above: Black Pumas’ vocalist Eric Burton and guitarist Adrian Quesada – Minneapolis, September 11, 2024.

As you might have gathered from my recent Photo of the Day, I saw the psychedelic soul band Black Pumas this past Wednesday at Surly Brewing Festival Field in Minneapolis. I was there with my friend David, and for a good half-hour we positioned ourselves at the foot of the stage where I was able to take some great photos.

It was a fantastic show, with the band playing many of their most popular songs – Colors, Gemini Sun, Fire, More Than a Love Song, and Black Moon Rising – from the two albums they’ve released to date, Black Pumas (2019) and Chronicles of a Diamond (2023).

Above: Black Pumas' backing vocalists Lauren Cervantes (left) and Angela Miller.

What the Black Pumas didn’t play last Wednesday night was their sublime 2020 cover of what’s been called “the first existential country song,” “Wichita Lineman,” so I share it here this evening for “music night” at The Wild Reed. It’s followed by a review of Chronicles of a Diamond. . . . Enjoy!

Martin Amis contended that writing becomes “less significant [when] anyone could have written it.” The authorial voice is king. Maybe he’d have appreciated how fully Black Pumas’ singer-songwriter Eric Burton’s joyful, antic spirit defines the soul revivalists’ excellent second album. Surely no one else could come up with the one-two punch of sun-dappled single “Mrs. Postman,” wherein Burton delivers a bushy-tailed tribute to blue-collar work, before approaching the title track from the perspective of a diamond in the back seat of a Cadillac.

Producer and co-writer Adrian Quesada also plays his A game. Black Pumas’ searing live show (“electric church,” according to Burton), as seen at events such as the Grammys and President Biden’s inauguration, feeds back into Quesada’s studio science here, broadening and deepening the band’s Neil Young meets Wu-Tang vibe. Although their self-titled debut had a glittering aura, the basic standard here is higher. From first note to last, Chronicles of a Diamond swaggers from the speakers. Even the love songs have new light cast on that hoary old topic by the roaring fire of Burton’s voice, while Quesada layers psychedelics and electronica into the orchestral mix, always conjuring new charms from familiar elements.

– Damien Morris
The Guardian
October 29, 2023

Related Off-site Links:
Black Pumas – Official Website.
From Busker to Black Puma: The Musical Journey of Singer Eric Burton – Spencer Fordin (Pasatiempo, June 7, 2024).
Black Pumas Guitarist Adrian Quesada’s Music Knows No Boundaries – Joe Gross (Texas Highways, August 2024).
Black Pumas Talk New Album, Chronicles of a Diamond – Wonderland (June 26, 2024).

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Black Pumas’ “Colors”: A Celebration of Family, Connections, Movement, and Life
• Photo of the Day – September 11, 2024

Images: Michael J. Bayly.

Progressive Perspectives on the Harris–Trump Presidential Debate

On Tuesday evening, September 10th, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump squared off in their first and only Presidential debate. The one main takeaway from the debate is that after several decades of lesser-evilism, it has become increasingly difficult to identify who the lesser evil is. This is because the Overton window has shifted so far to the right in the neoliberal era that the space which was once occupied by traditional liberals like FDR and JFK is now a void. The Democrat Party has moved into the realm of Reaganism, adding in a flavor of bourgeois (false) wokeness to soften its loyalty to corporate governance, capitalist degradation, and war. This has left the Republican Party as the forerunners of late capitalism’s slide from covert to overt fascism, albeit not without an internal struggle led by the entrenched neocons who are now jumping ship to join the Reaganist Democrats.

In this decades-long slide toward overt fascism, Republicans have pushed for an expansion of the Southern Strategy into parts of the Midwest and rural coastline, still relying heavily on racist, bigoted, and xenophobic sensationalism to appeal to voters. This remains a successful strategy in 2024 due to the material degradation caused by late capitalism, which has sparked a reactionary response from “middle-class” whites who feel their privileges slipping away and need a bogeyman to blame. In response, Republicans and conservative media feed them with a never-ending list of scapegoats — illegals, criminals, wokeness, Haitians, etc. — designed to provide cover for the real culprits: the capitalist class and corporate governance.

Meanwhile, Democrats have assumed the role of warhawks from the 1980s/90s neocons, using everything from outdated cold-war propaganda to their own brand of xenophobia to push for more wars. The fact that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton both praised Reagan during their campaigns, and Harris pulled a similar move with John McCain on Tuesday, suggests this is a conscious and strategic move to express loyalty to the military industrial complex. It's no coincidence that Dick Cheney recently endorsed Harris.

– Hampton Institute
Excerpted from “Irrational Politics in a Dying Empire:
Our Response to the Trump-Harris Debate”
September 11, 2024

What a spectacle we witnessed [Tuesday] night.

Trump predictably leaned on racist tropes and violent rhetoric that demonizes and dehumanizes our immigrant neighbors, spreads vicious lies about women exercising control over our bodies, and fans the flames of hatred against our LGBTQIA+ family. . . . Have no doubt: Trump has and will continue to advance the interests of Christian Nationalist fundamentalists and white supremacists in his pursuit of unrestrained power.

[Yet in terms of policy] there is very little difference between Kamala Harris and Donald J. Trump.

BOTH Harris and Trump boasted about embracing war criminals and guaranteeing the dominance of American capital at the expense of everything else.

BOTH of them promised to support fracking and bragged about their results in expanding fossil fuel extraction.

BOTH of them promised to continue building our military and stoked military tensions with Iran, China, and Russia.

BOTH agree on giving Israel unilateral authority over our foreign policy decisions in the Middle East.

BOTH agree on unlimited militarization of our border.

BOTH agree that private interests like the profit of fossil fuel companies outweigh the collective interest of the survival of our species and our planet.

The end result is the same. Working people are squeezed back into the meat grinder of our exploitation economy, the American empire remains unchecked, and our planet is burned to ash as our core democratic freedoms – like the rights to protest, boycott, and petition the government for redress of grievances – are crushed.

– Jill Stein
Green Party presidential candidate
via social media
September 11, 2024

The banner headline across the top of The New York Times home page – “Harris Puts Trump on Defensive in Fierce Debate” – was accurate enough. But despite the good news for people understandably eager for former President Donald Trump to be defeated, the Harris debate performance was a moral and political tragedy.

In Gaza “now an estimated 40,000 Palestinians are dead,” an ABC News moderator said. “Nearly 100 hostages remain. . . . President Biden has not been able to break through the stalemate. How would you do it?”

Vice President Harris replied with her standard wording: “Israel has a right to defend itself. We would. And how it does so matters. Because it is also true far too many innocent Palestinians have been killed. Children, mothers. What we know is that this war must end. It must when, end immediately, and the way it will end is we need a cease-fire deal and we need the hostages out.”

“End immediately”? Anyone who isn’t in fantasyland knows that the only way to soon end the slaughter of Palestinian civilians would be for the U.S. government – the overwhelmingly biggest supplier of Israel’s armaments – to stop sending weapons to Israel.

Meanwhile, a pivot to advocating for a cut-off of weapons to Israel would help Harris win the presidency. After the debate, the Institute for Middle East Understanding pointed out that the need to halt the weapons is not only moral and legal – it’s also smart politics. Polls are clear that most Americans want to stop arming Israel. In swing states, polling has found that a large number of voters say they’d be more likely to cast a ballot for Harris if she would support a halt.

. . . Israel’s war on 2.2 million people in Gaza has been a supercharged escalation of what Israel had been doing for 75 years, treating human beings as suitable for removal and even destruction. As Israel’s war on Gaza has persisted, the explanations often echoed the post-9/11 rationales for the “war on terror” from the U.S. government: authorizing future crimes against humanity as necessary in the light of certain prior events.

That and so much more – left unsaid from the debate stage, dodged in U.S. mass media, and evaded from the podiums of power in Washington – indict not only the Israeli government but also the U.S. government as an accomplice to mass murder that has escalated into genocide.

Silence is a blanket that smothers genuine democratic discourse and the outcries of moral voices. Making those voices inaudible is a key goal for the functioning of the warfare state.

– Norman Solomon
Excerpted from “Undebatable: What Harris and Trump
Could Not Say About Israel and Gaza”
Common Dreams
September 11, 2024

Trump’s construct of “migrant crime” is a racist myth. This association – more immigrants = more crime – has been repeatedly disproven. If anything, studies and data suggest the opposite: more immigrants = less crime. Let me explain.

Trump Republicans often assess “crime” levels using incarceration, arrest, and murder rates. Every year from 1870 to 2020, immigrants have been incarcerated at a lower rate compared to U.S. citizens. This gap has become even more pronounced since the 1960s. Today, immigrants are 60% less likely to be incarcerated than U.S. citizens. Immigrants are 30% less likely to be incarcerated than White Americans.

In Texas, U.S.-born citizens were between 2 and 4 times more likely to be arrested for violent, drug, and property crimes than undocumented immigrants, according to a study published in 2020.

Since the 1970s, the U.S. murder rate has decreased while the share of the foreign-born U.S. population has increased. While immigration rates declined significantly in 2020, homicide rates rose sharply. While immigration rates started rising in 2021 and 2022, homicide rates leveled out and then declined.

Trump and his political operatives can publicize and make up cases of individuals who happen to be immigrants engaging in violence. But don’t let them distract you for the fact that there’s no link between “migrant” and “crime.” It's a second Trump presidency – not immigrants – that poses a grave threat to the safety and well-being of Americans, of humanity.

– Ibram X. Kendi
via social media
September 12, 2024

[Kamala Harris says] that Americans are “exhausted about the division” – seeming to imply that the country was once solid and unified, fully in agreement on the nature of American values and such matters as who are enemies are. This seems to be one of the media talking points of the moment, which is ironic almost beyond belief. A nation born in a state of legalized slavery has never been a unified nation. What unity that does currently exist isn’t the result of Americans simply deciding to get along – or all agreeing on a specific, external enemy – but rather the result of decades and decades and decades of intense struggle, a la the civil rights movement, the women’s rights movement, the workers’ movements, etc., etc., and the ongoing creation of the country as it exists today.

During the debate, most of what Trump blathered was screw-loose nonsense, mixed, of course, with his special brand of racism, that is to say: the invasion of illegal aliens. This was the issue Trump rambled on about regardless of what he was asked to address, be it the economy, abortion, the January 6 riot, or whatever.

. . . The media consensus seems to be that Harris won the ping-pong game – I mean, the debate – because she spoke with clarity, factual accuracy, and sufficient contempt to continually put Trump in his place. And yes, I get this, she won the ping-pong game. But in her “victory,” what deeper truth did Harris advance? What not-yet-existing country did she envision and present to the American people . . . and the world? I heard the clichés, especially the military clichés, but I didn’t see the vision.

– Robert C. Koehler
Excerpted from “The Trump-Harris Debate:
Racist Lies Vs. Military Clichés”
Common Dreams
September 12, 2024

Pundits, a day later, ruminate about who won the September 10th “presidential debate,” but that is the wrong question. The most important revelation from Tuesday night's clusterfuck of bad theater ought to be this: the patient won't survive. The bedridden train-wreck sprawled across the gurney in the hospice unit is the United States of America – and the debate wasn't destined to be revelatory. We already knew that the corpse, writhing and contorting in agony, will need life-support first and a skilled embalmer soon enough. The debate proved for the billionth time that the greatest country on earth has less hope than a popsicle on the surface of the sun.

The debate wasn't about Kamala Harris – she is the default mode, the automatic pilot, a celebration of generic items, a slinky on a long stair case, a golf course watering system in a terminal draught, a row of telephone poles on an endless train ride. Forget about her. She does not exist. AI created her.

This debate was about Donald Trump. If an alien spacecraft lands on your street and parks next to a Honda Fit, the make of the car becomes irrelevant. If you are waking in the morning with a blister on your little toe and notice a tumor growing out of your side as big as the bathroom sink, you no longer attend to the foot discomfort.

Trump is our measuring stick, our gauge of disease, our face of national distress. If Trump had a debate with Jesus himself you wouldn't see it as the bantering back and forth between good and evil – you'd look at Trump and ask, “What the fuck is that?” In any context, Trump does not belong. He is a walking double take. You look at Trump as if your arm falls off and blood streams from your empty shoulder. He is bad shit that should not be there – but there he is.

. . . [Trump] argued back and forth with Kamala Harris about which one fracked the hardest. Picture two arsonists bickering over which one owns the largest gas can, and you get the idea. . . . Can you imagine that maybe a couple billion years hence, a team of alien explorers lands on the burnt remnants of our planet and discovers the video of Tuesday's debate? What will our alien visitors say to one another? Perhaps they'll say, “Those dumb fucks where watching this and chewing on popcorn while their planet roasted.”

– Phil Wilson
Excerpted from “A Few Crazy Thoughts
Regarding the Batshit Harris-Trump Debate”
Common Dreams
September 12, 2024

No matter which of them wins on November 5, it appears there will be no fundamental disruption of a system in which the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, tens of millions of people lack health care, corporate power continues its reign of economic terror, climate change remains unmitigated, 60 per cent of Americans live paycheck to paycheck, and brute force continues to be our main problem-solving modality domestically and internationally.

She is less dangerous in the short term, but they both represent a system that leaves the majority of Americans to fend for themselves within an unjust economy and an increasingly dangerous world.

– Marianne Williamson
via social media
September 10, 2024

Related Off-site Links:
“Dystopian Vision”: Carol Anderson on Trump’s Election Denial and Racist Fearmongering – Democracy Now! (September 11, 2024).
Will Harris Take on Corporate Greed? Ralph Nader and Joe Stiglitz on Debate, Trump’s Tariffs, and More – Democracy Now! (September 11, 2024).
Ralph Nader and Joseph Stiglitz on Kamala Harris’s Economic Plans and Confronting Corporate Power – Democracy Now! (September 11, 2024).
Challenging the Duopoly: Jill Stein on Why She’s Running for U.S. President as Green Party Candidate – Radhika Desai and Michael Hudson (Geopolitical Economy Report, April 20, 2024).
Jill Stein Shatters Kamala Harris’s Platform – Sabrina Salvati (Sabby Sabs, September 11, 2024).
Blocked from Debate, Socialist Candidate Claudia De la Cruz Blasts “Spectacle” of Democracy – Break Through News (September 11, 2024).

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Progressive Perspectives on the Presidential Nomination of Kamala Harris
• Progressive Perspectives on an American Coronation
• Will We Let Fascism Come to America?
• Voices on the Issues That Really Matter
• Peter Savodnik: Quote of the Day – August 22, 2024
• History Matters
• Breaking Down Kamala Harris’ DNC Speech on Gaza
• Chris Hedges on the End of the American Empire
• Marianne Williamson: “We’re Living in Very Serious Times and We Need to Be Very Serious People”
• Steve Grumbine: “It’s a Systematic Slaughter That We’re Funding”
• Memes of the Times
• On This Momentous Day in U.S. Politics, a Visit to the Prayer Tree
• Progressive Perspectives on the Crisis in U.S. Electoral Politics
• Elise Labott on How Third Parties Can Revitalize Democracy
• “Americans Deserve Choices”: Jill Stein on Breaking Points – 4/30/24
• Green Party Vice Presidential Candidate Butch Ware in Minneapolis

Image: A scene from a watch party for the U.S. presidential debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump at American Eat Co. in Tucson, Arizona on September 10, 2024. (Photo: Rebecca Noble/AFP via Getty Images)

Photo of the Day

NEXT:
Black Pumas in Minneapolis

Related Off-site Links:
Black Pumas – Official Website.
From Busker to Black Puma: The Musical Journey of Singer Eric Burton – Spencer Fordin (Pasatiempo, June 7, 2024).
Black Pumas Guitarist Adrian Quesada’s Music Knows No Boundaries – Joe Gross (Texas Highways, August 2024).
Black Pumas Talk New Album, Chronicles of a Diamond – Wonderland (June 26, 2024).

See also the previous Wild Reed post:
• Black Pumas’ “Colors”: A Celebration of Family, Connections, Movement, and Life

Image: Michael J. Bayly.

Green Party Vice Presidential Candidate Butch Ware in Minneapolis

This past Sunday in Minneapolis, my friend Joseph and I attended a meet-and-greet with Green Party vice presidential candidate Dr. Rudolf “Butch” Ware III, who, although residing in California, spent much of his childhood and youth in Minneapolis.

This event was organized by the Green Party of Minnesota. Along with Dr. Ware, Rachel Braaten and Toya López, two Green Party candidates running in local elections, were present, and at one point a pre-recorded video message from Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein was shared. Also shared, a delicious meal from Baba’s Hummus House and Mana’eesh Bakery.

As I’m not a U.S. citizen but rather a Green Card holder (or “legal resident”), I’m unable to vote in the upcoming presidential election, or any election for that matter. This hasn’t stopped me from supporting and working on a number of political campaigns over the years, both at the federal and local levels. I even had a summer of supporting progressive down-ballot candidates in 2020. The campaigns and candidates I’ve supported – Ralph Nader, Bernie Sanders, Marianne Williamson – have definitely been on what some would call the “left” end of the political spectrum. In reality, though, I believe what they represent is quite mainstream; centrist even. It’s just that decades of “voting lesser evil” and other concessions to the right have skewered the Overton window in such a way that the policies that the majority of Americans actually want are viewed and labeled as “far left” by the two major corporate-back political parties and the corporate media. It’s bizarre, I know.

Back in 2016 I noted that if I could vote, I would vote for Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein. At the time, a friend challenged me on this, saying: “The time to build the movement for a third party is not during an election season, especially one that’s close and where one of the candidates (Trump) wants to move us back fifty years.” I responded by noting that, actually, the only way for a third party to gain “major political party” status and thus help build a viable movement is during an election season, by securing a certain percent of the vote. I also argued that voting for an alternative, people-powered (as opposed to corporate-backed) party is actually the moral thing to do, given the level of corruption and dysfunction of the two corporate-backed major parties.

I would vote the same way this year, i.e., for Jill Stein, if I were a citizen. And I would do so because in good conscience I could not vote for either Trump or Harris due to their support for Israel’s ongoing genocidal project in Gaza and the West Bank. There are other reasons too that come into play, but the two corporate-backed major parties support of genocide, and in the Democrats’ case, their active support, is the main one. The Green Party, on the other hand, represents not only an all out challenge to genocide but also to empire and oligarchy.

Following is an excerpt from American Muslim Today’s September 4 interview with Jill Stein and Butch Ware.

Dr. Jill Stein and Butch Ware represent the Green Party’s historic ticket for the 2024 U.S. presidential election, uniting a Jewish woman and a Black Muslim man in a shared commitment to fight against genocide, endless wars, and climate collapse. Stein, a Harvard-educated physician and environmental health advocate, has dedicated her career to championing causes related to public health, environmental justice, and peace.

Meanwhile, Rudolph “Butch” Ware III, a historian and professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, brings his extensive experience as an activist and scholar focused on empire, colonialism and genocide.

Their campaign, seen as a bold challenge to the political status quo, emphasizes the importance of addressing critical global issues, particularly the ongoing conflicts in Gaza and the need for transformative domestic policies.


AMT: How is your campaign progressing, and what feedback are you receiving from voters on the ground? Do you view this as one of the most pivotal elections in recent history? Additionally, can you tell us how many states you’re on the ballot?

Stein: We are currently on the ballot in nearly 40 states, with an additional eight states where voters can write us in, meaning we are effectively on the ballot in all but two states. Unfortunately, our political system often limits voter choices, pushing them towards two parties that many feel have not adequately served the public.

Before the campaign even began, polls showed that a record number of voters wanted more options. A Gallup poll revealed that 63% of voters believe the two major parties are failing to meet the needs of Americans. People are searching for alternatives, and we’ve seen that on the campaign trail.

Today, we are facing unprecedented levels of economic insecurity. Over 60% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, and nearly half are severely stressed, with 50% spending a significant portion of their income on rent. Medical and student debt, along with the struggle to afford basic healthcare, are everyday concerns for many. Meanwhile, our government continues to allocate half of its congressional budget to wars, including the war on Gaza, leaving domestic needs neglected.

The recent massacres in Gaza have only deepened Americans’ frustrations. Many are demanding an end to endless wars and the reallocation of tax dollars to address pressing domestic issues. Despite facing significant obstacles, including legal challenges and attempts to undermine our campaign, the response from the public is clear: they want a fairer future.


AMT: What motivated you to join this ticket? Do the policies of the Green Party align with your values, and would you say it feels like a natural fit for you?

Ware: As a practicing Muslim, I never saw myself in politics, and I still don’t think of this as traditional politics. The Green Party isn’t about being politicians — they’re public servants. My decision was influenced by a profound spiritual experience.

I had a conversation with my Lord, and I was shown the Day of Judgment. God asked me, “Where did I ever offer you a weapon that you could use to defend your brothers and sisters in humanity, and you refused it?” Turning down this opportunity would mean refusing a chance to stand for peace and justice.

I had to set aside my books, my students, and my personal interests to stand alongside Dr. Jill Stein, an anti-Zionist Jewish woman committed to redirecting American resources to domestic needs and ending the misuse of tax dollars through foreign wars for companies like Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, and Boeing.

. . . I grew up learning about the Green Party’s values through my friend Sean Young, whose mother was one of the first Green Party elected officials in Minnesota. This partnership [with Stein] was meant to be, and it’s grounded in our collective resistance to militarism and genocide.

To read American Muslim Today’s full interview with Jill Stein and Butch Ware, click here.

Above and below: Butch Ware in Minneapolis – Sunday, September 8, 2024.

Last Tuesday, September 4, Jill Stein and Butch Ware were guests on Chris Hedges’ podcast, The Chris Hedges Report. At one point in this interview, Stein says that “genocide is the moral imperative of our era.”

In describing this episode of his podcast, Hedges notes that “together, Stein and Ware make their case as to why they should earn the vote of every disenfranchised American, stuck in the woes of personal domestic struggles and the atrocities committed abroad on their behalf by a self-serving empire.”





Related Off-site Links:
Interview: Dr. Jill Stein on AOC’s Instagram Attack, Green Party Challenges and Victories, and More – Glenn Greenwald (System Update with Glenn Greenwald, September 10, 2024).
Piers Morgan Smears Jill Stein and She Pushes Back – Kit Cabello (Hard Lens Media, September 10, 2024).
Green Party VP Nominee Butch Ware Roasts AOC After “Predatory” Tirade: “You’re Finished” – Kaitlyn Kennedy (TAG24, September 3, 2024).
Presidential Candidate Jill Stein Says the Green Party Has Transformed Political Agendas – Meghan Bowman (WMNF.org, September 3, 2024).
Call the Greens an “Independent Party,” Not “Third Party”: Jill Stein – Rich Johnson (NewsNation, August 31, 2024).
Muslim Voters Evenly Split Between Jill Stein and Kamala Harris, New Poll Finds – Umar A Farooq (Middle East Eye, August 29, 2024).
Challenging the Duopoly: Jill Stein on Why She’s Running for U.S. President as Green Party Candidate – Radhika Desai and Michael Hudson (Geopolitical Economy Report, April 20, 2024).
Jill Stein Formally Launches 2024 White House Bid as Green Party Candidate – Robert Tait (The Guardian, November 21, 2023).
It’s Time to Build a Third Party – Anthony Pahnke (The Progressive, April 15, 2021).
U.S. Third Parties Can Rein In the Extremism of the Two-party System – Bernard Tamas (The Conversation, June 22, 2021).
The Problem with “The Lesser of Two Evils” – Zachary Ludwick (The Uproar, November 2, 2020).
Jill Stein Challenges Hillary Clinton to Debate After “Russian Asset” Smear – Eoin Higgins (Common Dreams, October 18, 2019).
Investigating Jill Stein for Russian Collusion Decried as “Dangerous” and “Absurd” – Jessica Corbett (Common Dreams, December 19, 2017).
Democrats Are Still Obsessed With Jill Stein. They Should Start Obsessing Over Non-voters Instead – Meagan Day (The Week, June 19, 2017).
Ralph Nader: The U.S. Political and Media System Is Designed to Obstruct and Silence Third-Party Candidates – Democracy Now! (May 10, 2016).
No, Ralph Nader Did Not Hand the 2000 Presidential Election to George W. Bush – Anthony Fisker (Reason, August 3, 2016).
Did Third-Party Candidates Cost Hillary Clinton the Election? – Byron Tau (The Wall Street Journal, November 14, 2016).
Can They Count? – Blaming Third-Party Voters for Trump’s Win Isn’t Just Bad Politics. It’s Bad Math – Jonah Walters (Jacobin, November 29, 2016).

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Butch Ware: “I’m Not Here as a Spoiler . . . I am Called Into the Fight for the Struggle for Freedom in Our Time”
• “Americans Deserve Choices”: Jill Stein on Breaking Points – 4/30/24
• Demolishing the False Narrative About Jill Stein and the 2016 Election
• Something to Think About – August 15, 2024
• Voices on the Issues That Really Matter
• “It’s a Systematic Slaughter That We’re Funding”
• Chris Hedges on the End of the American Empire
• Breaking Down Kamala Harris’s DNC Speech on Gaza
• Progressive Perspectives On an American Coronation
• Centrist/Corporatist Democrats Have Just Launched “Left Punching” Season
• Progressive Perspectives on the Crisis in U.S. Electoral Politics
• Progressive Perspectives on the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election
• Hope Over Fear: Voting Green

“It’s a Systematic Slaughter That We’re Funding”

I’m 55-years-old and in my time on this earth I’ve never experienced a more brutal, direct video-taped, in-you-face slaughter of people. Ever. In my life. It’s fundamentally changed me. Seeing this has taken the politics completely out of it for me. I don't want to hear about what elections are going on. . . . I mean, when I saw that girl with her jaw all hanging off, I thought to myself, if that was my son, what would I do? . . . So I don’t care about the election. All I care about is ending [this] genocide. Let’s call it what it is.

It’s a systematic slaughter that we’re funding. . . . And when I see a Democrat [at the National Democratic Convention] grabbing [and trying to remove an anti-genocide protester’s] sign, it tells me all I need to know about the morals and the direction of that party. It tells me everything I need to know about the selection [of Kamala Harris]. They’re not concerned [about what’s happening in Gaza]. And, quite frankly, everytime I think about this, all I can envision is, really, I have no power here. Voting – great, wonderful. But how do you stop this thing?

We saw campuses across the country filled with students and with teachers risking tenure, risking their careers, [protesting against what’s happening in Gaza and our complicity] and getting bludgeoned by cops. If we are not already in a fascist state, I don’t know what one is.

– Steve Grumbine
Excerpted from “Ben Burgis and Steve Grumbine
Throw Cold Water on DNC Good Vibes”
Status Coup News
September 9, 2024

Related Off-site Links:
How Long Can U.S. Lawmakers Ignore These Images of Child Carnage in Gaza? – Jake Johnson (Common Dreams, September 9, 2024).
The Live-Streamed Genocide in Gaza Exposes U.S. Complicity for All to See – Omar Suleiman (Common Dreams, September 10, 2024).
“Another Unbearable and Horrific Massacre”: U.S.-Armed IDF Kills Dozens in Tent City Bombing – Jake Johnson (Common Dreams, September 10, 2024).
Tariq Ali on U.S. and U.K. Arming Israel’s War on Gaza, Pakistan Protests, and Macron’s Embrace of the Right – Democracy Now! (September 10, 2024).
Forging Peace in Gaza Would Also Help Harris Defeat Trump – James Zogby (Common Dreams, September 9, 2024).
The Horror of It All: The Unbearable Tragedy of a War That Does Not End – Marianne Williamson (Transform, September 1, 2024).
Poll Shows Voter Support for Harris Would Grow If She Backed Arms Embargo on Israel – Jake Johnson (Common Dreams, September 6, 2024).
A Last Chance for Harris to Win Back Voters Opposed to Gaza Genocide – Basim Elkarra (Common Dreams, September 6, 2024).
I’m Still Hoping to Vote for Kamala Harris – Benjamin Moser (The Nation, August 30, 2024).
Muslim Voters Evenly Split Between Jill Stein and Kamala Harris, New Poll Finds – Umar A Farooq (Middle East Eye, August 29, 2024).
Democrats Dismiss the Pain of Gaza at Their Moral, and Possibly Political, Peril – James Carden (Common Dreams, August 25, 2024).
“You Must Do Better”: Harris Rebuked Over Failure to Change Course on Gaza – Jake Johnson (Common Dreams, August 23, 2024).
Harris Urged to Take “Clear Stance” Against Weapons Sales for Israel – Jake Johnson (Common Dreams, July 22, 2024).
“Where Is the World?”: Gaza Mourns Victims as Israel Continues to Target Humanitarian Refuges – Democracy Now! (July 17, 2024).
“Unfathomable”: Lancet Study Estimates Gaza Death Toll May Exceed 186,000 – Julia Conley (Common Dreams, July 8, 2024).
Drafter of Leahy Law Says It Was Never Applied to Israel – Connor Echols (Responsible Statecraft, May 7, 2024).
How U.S. Violates Its Own Leahy Law to Ensure Military Support for Israel – Ali Harb (Al Jazeera, May 2, 2024).
“Genocidal Actions” Persist in Gaza as Israel Blocks Aid and U.S. Weapons Flow – Julia Conley (Common Dreams, April 12, 2024).
Journalist Abby Martin Explains Why She Considers Israel’s Actions in Gaza to Constitute Genocide – Middle East Eye (April 3, 2024).
“A War Machine Out of Control”: Israel Keeps Attacking Aid Workers as Gaza Faces Famine – Democracy Now! (April 3, 2024).
How Do Leahy Laws Apply to U.S. Support for Israel? – An Interview with Charles Blaha, Former Director of the State Department’s Office of Security and Human Rights – Leila Fadel (NPR News, March 26, 2024).
Draft U.N, Report Finds Israel Has Met Threshold for Genocide – Brett Wilkins (Common Dreams, March 25, 2024).

UPDATE: Trump’s Bonkers Dog Eating Immigrants Claim, Kamala’s Neoliberal Nonsense: An Interview with Steve Grumbine on the Presidential Debate – Status Coup News (September 11, 2024).

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Yousef Munayyer: Quote of the Day – August 30, 2024
• Chris Hedges on the End of the American Empire
• Breaking Down Kamala Harris’s DNC Speech on Gaza
• Progressive Perspectives on the Presidential Nomination of Kamala Harris
• John Cusack: Quote of the Day – July 26, 2024
• Phyllis Bennis: “We Can Never Give Up Hope”
• Nina Turner: Quote of the Day – July 24, 2024
• Something to Think About – June 28, 2024
• Kyle Kulinski: Quote of the Day – May 23, 2024
• Judith Butler on the Ongoing Student Protests Against the Gaza Genocide
• Naomi Klein’s Powerful Words on Israel’s and the West’s Ongoing Gaza Genocide
• Outrage and Despair
• “This Is a Genocidal Project”
• “A Genocide Has Been Normalized”
• Voices of Reason and Compassion on the Crisis in Israel and Gaza
• More Voices of Reason and Compassion on the Crisis in Israel and Gaza
• Josh Paul: Quote of the Day – March 28, 2024
• Phyllis Bennis: Quote of the Day – March 28, 2024
• Michael Fakhri: Quote of the Day – February 27, 2024
• Sabrina Salvati: Quote of the Day – January 2, 2024
• Christmas 2023 – Reflections, Activism, Art, and Celebrations
• Jehad Abusalim: Quote of the Day – December 8, 2023
• Ta-Nehisi Coates: Quote of the Day – November 2, 2023
• In the Midst of the “Great Unraveling,” a Visit to the Prayer Tree
• Prayer of the Week – October 16, 2023
• Something to Think About – October 12, 2023
• Eric Levitz: Quote of the Day – October 11, 2023
• Phyllis Bennis: “If We Are Serious About Ending This Spiraling Violence, We Need to Look at Root Causes”
• “Nothing About Today is ‘Unprovoked’”
• “The Mistreatment and Discrimination Against Palestinians Is Not Unprecedented. It’s Baked Into the Foundation of the Political System in Israel”
• Progressive Perspectives on the Ongoing Israeli-Palestinian “Nightmare” (2021)
• Something to Think About – July 29, 2018
• Noura Erakat: Quote of the Day – May 15, 2018
• For Some Jews, Israel’s Treatment of Palestinians is Yet Another Jewish Tragedy
• Remembering the Six-Day War and Its Ongoing Aftermath
• David Norris: Quote of the Day – August 12, 2014

Image: Twelve-year-old Mazyouna, who was injured in Al-Nuseirat by an Israeli missile attack that tore her jaw from her face. Screencap from a video posted on X by Sarah Wilkinson.

When Democrats Undermine Democracy

In case you missed it, there’s been a bit of a verbal dust-up recently between two prominent women of the left – Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) and Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein.

The video below is a segment from the Rising podcast that explains in greater detail what’s been going on. It also includes an interview with Jill Stein who responds to both AOC’s recent uninformed diatribe and the wider issue of the Democratic Party’s ongoing efforts to suppress alternative parties and thus the democratic process. Oh, and you don’t have to be a Green Party supporter to appreciate Stein’s takedown of AOC, a takedown which, in my view, has been long overdue.





Related Off-site Links and Updates:
AOC Attacks Jill Stein and the Green Party for Existing in Cringe Video – Kit Cabello (Hard Lens Media, September 2, 2024).
AOC Says Jill Stein and Third Parties are “Predators” – Larry Sharpe (The Sharpe Way, September 2, 2024).
AOC Gets Slammed by Butch Ware in Epic Video – Kit Cabello (Hard Lens Media, September 3, 2024).
Jill Stein VS AOC Escalates – Kit Cabello and Daniel Luepker (Hard Lens Media, September 4, 2024).
AOC Smears Jill Stein – Sabrina Salvati (Sabby Sabs, September 4, 2024).
Jill Stein Claps Back Hard at AOC’s “Predatory” Attack: Green Party Shuts Down Democratic Hypocrisy – Marc Lamont Hill (Marc Lamont Hill Official, September 4, 2024).
Campaigning Against Genocide: An Interview with Dr. Jill Stein and Butch Ware – The Chris Hedges Report (September 4, 2024).
AOC’s Bad Faith Attacks on Jill Stein – Briahna Joy Gray and Sabrina Salvati (Bad Faith, September 5, 2024).
Interview: Dr. Jill Stein on AOC’s Instagram Attack, Green Party Challenges and Victories, and More – Glenn Greenwald (System Update with Glenn Greenwald, September 10, 2024).
Greens and Jill Stein Fight Back Against AOC, Democrats, and the Media – Hard Lens Media (September 12, 2024).

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Elise Labott on How Third Parties Can Revitalize Democracy
• Butch Ware: “I’m Not Here as a Spoiler . . . I am Called Into the Fight for the Struggle for Freedom in Our Time”
• Something to Think About – August 15, 2024
• Corporatist Democrats Have Just Launched “Left Punching” Season
• “Americans Deserve Choices”: Jill Stein on Breaking Points – 4/30/24
• AOC Falls in Line
• Thoughts on Cornel West’s 2024 Presidential Run