IMPORTANT READS

EDITOR’S PICK--I have struggled to find words to express what I thought and felt as I watched the videos of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile being killed by the police. Thursday night, I wanted to say something that hasn’t been said a hundred times before. It finally dawned on me that there is nothing to say that hasn’t been said before.

As I was preparing to write about the oldness of all of this, and share some wisdom passed down from struggles of earlier eras, I heard on the news that 11 officers had been shot in Dallas, several killed from sniper fire. My fingers froze on the keys. I could not bring myself to recycle old truths. Something more is required. But what?

I think we all know, deep down, that something more is required of us now. This truth is difficult to face because it’s inconvenient and deeply unsettling. And yet silence isn’t an option. On any given day, there’s always something I’d rather be doing than facing the ugly, racist underbelly of America.

I know that I am not alone. But I also know that the families of the slain officers, and the families of all those who have been killed by the police, would rather not be attending funerals. And I’m sure that many who refused to ride segregated buses in Montgomery after Rosa Parks stood her ground wished they could’ve taken the bus, rather than walk miles in protest, day after day, for a whole year. But they knew they had to walk. If change was ever going to come, they were going to have to walk. And so do we. 

What it means to walk today will be different for different people and different groups and in different places. I am asking myself what I need to do in the months and years to come to walk my walk with greater courage. It’s a question that requires some time and reflection. I hope it’s a question we are all asking ourselves.

"If we're serious about having peace officers—rather than a domestic military at war with its own people—we're going to have to get honest with ourselves about who our democracy actually serves and protects."

In recent years, I have come to believe that truly transformative change depends more on thoughtful creation of new ways of being than reflexive reactions to the old. What is happening now is very, very old. We have some habits of responding to this familiar pain and trauma that are not serving us well. In many respects it’s amazing that we endure at all. I am inspired again and again by so much of the beautiful, brilliant and daring activism that is unfolding all over the country. Yet I also know that more is required than purely reactive protest and politics. A profound shift in our collective consciousness must occur, a shift that makes possible a new America.

I know many people believe that our criminal justice system can be “fixed” by smart people and smart policies. President Obama seems to think this way. He suggested yesterday that police-community relations can be improved meaningfully by a task force he created last year. Yes, a task force.

I used to think like that. I don’t anymore. I no longer believe that we can “fix” the police, as though the police are anything other than a mirror reflecting back to us the true nature of our democracy. We cannot “fix” the police without a revolution of values and radical change to the basic structure of our society. Of course important policy changes can and should be made to improve police practices. But if we’re serious about having peace officers—rather than a domestic military at war with its own people—we’re going to have to get honest with ourselves about who our democracy actually serves and protects.

Consider this: Philando Castile had been stopped 31 times and charged with more than 60 minor violations—resulting in thousands of dollars in fines—before his last, fatal encounter with the police.

Alton Sterling was arrested because he was hustling, selling CDs to get by. He was unable to work in the legal economy due to his felony record. His act of survival was treated by the police as a major crime, apparently punishable by death.

"None of the horrifying images from the Jim Crow era would've changed anything if a highly strategic, courageous movement had not existed that was determined to challenge a deeply entrenched system of racial and social control."

How many people on Wall Street have been arrested for their crimes large and small—crimes of greed and fraud that nearly bankrupted the global economy and destroyed the futures of millions of families?

How many politicians have been prosecuted for taking millions of dollars from private prisons, prison guard unions, pharmaceutical companies, oil companies, tobacco companies, the NRA and Wall Street banks and doing their bidding for them—killing us softly? Oh, that’s right, taking millions from those folks isn’t even a crime. Democrats and Republicans do it every day.

Our entire political system is financed by wealthy private interests buying politicians and making sure the rules are written in their favor. But selling CDs or loose cigarettes? In America, that’s treated as a serious crime, especially if you’re black. For that act of survival, you can be wrestled to the ground and choked to death or shot at point blank range. Our entire system of government is designed to protect and serve the interests of the most powerful, while punishing, controlling and exploiting the least advantaged.

This is not hyperbole. And this is not new. What is new is that we’re now watching all of this on YouTube and Facebook, streaming live, as imagined super-predators are brought to heel. Fifty years ago, our country was forced to look at itself in the mirror when television stations broadcast Bloody Sunday, the day state troopers and a sheriff’s posse brutally attacked civil rights activists marching for voting rights in Selma.

Those horrifying images, among others, helped to turn public opinion in support of the Civil Rights Movement. Perhaps the images we’ve seen in recent days will make some difference. It’s worth remembering, though, that none of the horrifying images from the Jim Crow era would’ve changed anything if a highly strategic, courageous movement had not existed that was determined to challenge a deeply entrenched system of racial and social control.

This nation was founded on the idea that some lives don’t matter. Freedom and justice for some, not all. That’s the foundation. Yes, progress has been made in some respects, but it hasn’t come easy. There’s an unfinished revolution waiting to be won.

(Michelle Alexander is the author of the bestselling book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness  (The New Press, 2010). The former director of the Racial Justice Project of the ACLU in Northern California, she also served as a law clerk to Justice Harry Blackmun on the U.S. Supreme Court.  Currently, she holds a joint appointment with the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity and the Moritz College of Law at Ohio State University. This piece posted first on Michelle’s Facebook page and most recently at Common Dreams.) 

-cw

DOWNWARD SPIRAL-Precariousness is not just a working-class thing. In recent interviews, dozens of academics and schoolteachers, administrators, librarians, journalists and even coders have told me they too are falling prey to an unstable new America. I’ve started to think of this just-scraping-by group as the Middle Precariat.  

The word Precariat was popularized five or so year ago to describe a rapidly expanding working class with unstable, low-paid jobs. What I call the Middle Precariat, in contrast, are supposed to be properly, comfortably middle class, but it’s not quite working out this way. 

There are people like the Floridian couple who both have law degrees – and should be in the prime of their working lives – but can’t afford a car or an apartment and have moved back in with the woman’s elderly mother. There are schoolteachers around the country that work second jobs after their teaching duties are done: one woman in North Dakota I spoke to was heading off to clean houses after the final bell in order to pay her rent. 

Many of the Middle Precariat work jobs that used to be solidly middle class. Yet some earn roughly what they did a decade ago. At the same time, middle-class life is now 30 percent more expensive than it was 20 years ago. The Middle Precariat’s jobs are also increasingly contingent – meaning they are composed of short-term contract or shift work, as well as unpaid overtime. Buffeted by Silicon Valley-like calls to maximize disruption, the Middle Precariat may have positions “reimagined.” That cruel euphemism means they are to be replaced by younger, cheaper workers, or even machines. 

This was brought home to me at a legal fair with thousands of attendees this winter. Between the small plastic gavel swag and the former corporate lawyer building a large-scale Lego block version of Van Gogh’s Starry Night, there were booths advertising software that reviews legal documents. That software helps firms get rid of employees, including attorneys, and might soon make some of the lawyers on that trade-show floor extinct. 

Other professionals describe how they must endure harsh non-traditional work schedules, much like their retail worker brethren. They work on weekends and late into the day and barely see their children. At the end of the year, they just break even, all the while retaining debt from college and even graduate school that they will never be able to repay. 

While households that make anywhere from $48,000 to $250,000 can call themselves middle class, to group such a wide range of incomes under one label, as politicians love to do, is to confuse the term entirely.

A worker at a tech company in California I interviewed has two jobs and commutes at least an hour each way to one of them, much like the working class Precariat does. He can’t afford to live anywhere near his offices – San Francisco is the most expensive housing market in the country, with an average rent at $4,780 for a two-bedroom apartment as of April. 

They and other members of the Middle Precariat I have spoken with over the last three years are ostensibly bourgeois, but with few of the advantages we used to associate with that standing. They may not be able to afford their mortgage payments or daycare, health and retirement savings or college educations for their kids. They also usually can’t afford a car for each adult, summer vacations or gym memberships, those status markers of the past. Indeed, some have resorted to SNAP and other federal benefits from time to time. 

The Middle Precariat also may be threatened by the rise of the robots, like their working-class peers. Like the lawyers at that trade show. The numbers confirm this: in 2014, only 64 percent of law school graduates had jobs that required bar passage. In 2013, unemployment was at 11.2 percent with underemployment numbers even higher. (By contrast, in 1985, more than 81 percent had full-time legal jobs and only seven percent were not working at all.) 

Journalists also have the machines nipping at their heels. Last month, tronc, formerly known as the illustrious Tribune newspaper company, demonstrated the rise of the Middle Precariat: tronc’s inadvertently hilarious branding videos celebrated artificial intelligence over photo editors, reporters and the like, replacing them with optimization and something called content funnels. 

Even nurses may soon join the Middle Precariat. The National Science Foundation is spending nearly a million dollars to research a future of robotic nurses who will lift patients and bring them medicine while keeping living nurses “in the decision loop”, even though nursing is one of the few growth industries that allows for upward mobility. 

The Middle Precariat, as the 2013 McKinsey Global Institute report on disruptive technologies explained, will only grow, as highly skilled workers are put on the chopping block and the “automation of knowledge work” expands. Soon to come are robot surgeons, robot financial workers, robot teachers and perhaps, robots that can take their mimicry of recent college graduates to the next level and argue that Beyonce’s Lemonade is feminism while drinking a micro brew. 

It’s reached a point where this threatened class has begotten a layer of consultants to fix the problem. In San Francisco, Casey Berman counsels economically and professionally desperate people who happen to be lawyers. “There is an easier, less painful, less stressful and lucrative way to make money,” Berman’s site Leave Law Behind reads. When I spoke to him a few months ago, he told me that he sees his mission as “motivating” former lawyers that are now broke and frustrated to do something else with their lives. 

But retraining and specialized psychotherapy aren’t the only answers. We need broad-based fixes. Universal subsidized daycare. Changing the tax code so it actually helps the middle class. Real collective bargaining rights for Middle Precariat workers. Paid leave to keep mothers from exiting the workforce against their will. Fair hours, not just for McDonald’s workers, but also for adjunct professors. 

We also need to question the pundits and companies that incant “artificial intelligence” as a mantra, even as they are celebrating a future where so many middle-class humans’ jobs may be jettisoned. And we can start to rebuke terms like “machine learning” or “disruption,” unmasking them – along with “the billionaires” – as some of the culprits. 

(Alissa Quart writes on labor and the economy for the Guardian where this article was first posted. Reposted by Capital and Main.  Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

MAKING A DIFFERENCE--Yes, there is something that each of us can do ... to change LA and America. In fact, nothing will improve unless each of us does actually start doing some things. 

(1) We Need to End the National Ethos That Killing People Is a Good Solution to Problems. 

As long as the majority of Americans support the death penalty, they support the idea that killing of people is an acceptable solution to some problems. If each of us rejects the death penalty, we can start to reorient our national consciousness. Even most mentally ill people are constrained by their country’s cultural norms. 

(2) We Need to Drop the Idea Some People Are Above The Law. 

The Obama Doctrine of “Too Important to Prosecute” will soon become the Trump Doctrine or the Hillary Doctrine. The pernicious idea that important people are above the law creates deep resentment within society. The avoidable crash in 2008 made millions of people homeless which has devastated families, traumatized many of the dispossessed children for life, and resulted in divorces, bankruptcies and suicides. Meanwhile the Federal government gave trillions of dollars to the crooks who had crashed the economy. (By making some people above the law, I do not mean the absurd idea that Hillary did some terrible crime with her emails. This leads to my next point.) 

(3) We Must Stop Supporting Our Own Party When it Spews Nonsense. 

Obama made some serious mistakes, but the nation never could have a rational discussion about Obama’s economic policies because the GOP has continued with it relentless racist attacks. The people who had the power to stop this extremely harmful activity were the GOP electorate. 

On the Dem side, the entire party was silent as Obama followed the regressive and asinine economic nonsense of Geithner. By remaining silent, these economic policies paved the way for the Tea Baggers in November 2010 and set the stage of the current politics of revenge. Obama did nothing to revive the economy. What we see now is the normal upswing of the business cycle. We need to develop the ability to admit our own mistakes and shortcomings rather than to habitually blame “the other.” Both the GOP and Dems persist in the blame game, while accepting zero responsibility for anything. 

We also have to be smart enough to realize that both parties raise millions of dollars from highlighting the zanies on the other side. So we give credence to the more extreme because it raises money for our party. That is a vice which both parties must forgo.  

(4) We Must Cease to Hold Predators in High Esteem. 

As a nation, we laud predators. Anyone with even a passing knowledge of Trump knows that he is a predator who intentionally abused the bankruptcy laws to ruin other people while making himself vastly wealthy. Despite this widespread knowledge, millions of Americans herald him as a savior. No one can support Trump without endorsing a predatory culture where the strong feed upon the weak. (Why do the disenfranchised support the person who is the number one example of the culture that has cheated them for the past 30 years? The answer is probably found in Anna Freud’s Identification with the Aggressor. I guess it is akin to the Stockholm Syndrome.)

Trump is not America’s first predator. For decades we tolerated Antonin Scalia as if he were some sage, when in reality he was a predatory egomaniac suffering from the delusion that he alone could divine the Original Intent of the framers of the US Constitution. That gave us the absurd idea that the right to own a gun was an individual right. Under this theory, individual Americans need to arm themselves so that they can kill government employees who would threaten their life, liberty or property. We saw how that philosophy works out in Dallas on July 7. (Oh, that’s right, Scalia didn’t mean that the right to own a gun applied to Blacks.) 

(5) We Need to Stop with the Jingoistic Charade that America is the Greatest Nation. 

Not only is this claim poppycock, but it also dangerously blinds us to our faults. No nation is the greatest. Each nation has its strengths and its weaknesses. America is far more racist than many other nations. We have an unacceptably high infant mortality rate and an inexcusably low educational achievement level. Too many children live in poverty and lack adequate food. It is extremely obnoxious to scream that we’re the greatest when we tear down the homes of the poor and shove them out onto the streets so that we can have photo-ops to justify giving billions of dollars to developers. See my recent article in CityWatch about “The Great LA Housing Scam.”

The greatest nation would not have the worse Gini wealth index. The lower the number, the more equitable the distribution of income. The higher the number, the more wealth is concentrated in the elite. 

“It found that the U.S. had the most wealth inequality, with a score of 80.56, showing the most concentration of overall wealth in the hands of the proportionately fewest people.” (Fortune Magazine, 9-30-2015, “America is The Richest, and Most Unequal, Country,” by Erik Sherman) Notice that the sources is not some far leftist propagandist, but Fortune Magazine. 

Since the Crash of 2008, most of the gain in new wealth due to increased productivity has not gone to the workers who created the wealth but to the top 1% who are responsible for causing the Crash. Those statistics alone explain the “politics of revenge” which Trump exemplifies. 

We are never going to put our country on the right track by brainlessly screaming “We’re #1" or “We’re the greatest.” Rather we need a new culture which admits that we are far from perfect, but that each day we will strive to improve. 

If not now, when? 

These are things which all of us can do right now today in our own lives. We can ferret out these self-defeating traits in ourselves and in our national discourse. We can recognize that it is not only the GOP who made people poor and it is not only the Dems who love Wall Street predators. We all participate in the culture of death and self-centered jingoism. Some of us actively support these ideas, while many of us are silent. We let the Los Angeles City Council be run as a criminal enterprise and we pretend we do not know that our state’s legal system is corrupt to the core. Even the federal courts said that the California system has an epidemic of misconduct because the judges condone such behavior.  

The habitual murders reflect who we are as a people. These things do not regularly happen in other nations whose cultures do not enshrine killing as a civic good and do not promote predators to be their national leaders. 

The only way to change our national consciousness and hence our destiny is for each of us to change our individual consciousness. 

(Richard Lee Abrams is a Los Angeles attorney. He can be reached at: [email protected]. Abrams views are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of CityWatch.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

GUEST WORDS--During his throat clearing at the 2011 White House Correspondents dinner in Washington, D.C., comedian Seth Meyers delivered a prophetic critique of the political ambitions of Donald J. Trump. 

The mogul, touting a run in the 2012 race, sat scowling at his table as the comic quipped: 

“Donald Trump has been saying he’ll run for president as a Republican, which is surprising as I just assumed he was running as a joke.” 

ALPERN AT LARGE--Like so many other upset and heartbroken Americans, I've no more capacity for "moments of silence" to address issues where silence is anything BUT the right response.  Of course, silence was never my strong suit. My religious, educational and moral training all point to the virtues of being hard on one's self, and on one's society--and our society is drowning in its own stupidity. 

If anyone reading this still honestly believes that former 2008 Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin is responsible for the shooting of former representative Gabby Giffords, then clearly it's a sign that the reader has forgotten what "free will" is, and the ability of a human being to make a decision on his/her own.  No diagram, photo or statement of former Governor Palin (whether you like or hate her) was ever any more a statement of "kill her!" than any political statement of President Barack Obama was any credible advocacy of violence against police officers. 

Sarah Palin didn't shoot Rep. Gabby Giffords, and would certainly have opposed (and probably opened fire on, were she present) the crazed lunatic who shot Giffords.  Similarly, President Obama didn't shoot those five heroic police officers in Dallas, and has condemned (and would certainly have order troops to open fire on, were he present) the crazed lunatic who shot them.  Lunatics and racist monsters have no tolerance in our society. 

But while Sarah Palin had no governmental power when Gabby Giffords was shot, President Obama does have power--so that while only a fool would suggest he wanted the Dallas shootings, it can be accurately stated that it occurred on his watch...and his being too tough on police officers while too kind and supportive to the more radical elements of Black Lives Matter is also on his watch. 

I advocated for the Brady Bill in years past, and support reasonable gun control measures presently and in the future.  Yet at the least, however, those advocating gun control at this time are quite ignorant both of the different types of guns and the statistics that completely ignore gun killings are going up, and have no correlation to how and where aggressive gun control measures are being implemented (think Chicago and Washington, D.C.). 

At the very most, those advocating gun control at this time are using "gun control" as a mindless, irrational mantra that entirely diverts from the REAL causes of violence in our society, and which deflects from and hurts the credibility of proper gun control measures.  Like a decay in our society's moral values, economic and social frustration and alienation of too many in our society, and a failure of leadership at the top. 

As in "the buck stops here" paradigm of Democratic President Truman's years versus the "I first heard about it in the newspapers" paradigm of Democratic President Barack Obama. 

Contrary to the political agitation and fomenting of divisions from the current presidential administration, our nation is almost entirely united: 

1) We believe that Black Lives Matter, and Blue Lives Matter.  The recent police shootings in Minnesota and Louisiana shake us to the core, and scream for better police training and the implementation of community-based policing that has transformed Los Angeles from a riot-prone city to one where violence is quite low compared to other cities. 

Yet the shootings of police officers in Dallas (and let's not forget New York and other assassinations of police officers throughout the nation) also shake us to the core, and it's upsetting that both President Obama and Attorney General Lynch aren't harder--MUCH harder--on the more radical elements of Black Lives Matter. Because and Obama and Lynch (and Holder before her) are hurting the credibility that Black Lives Matter needs to implement true and positive change. 

2) Black Lives Matter should not, and need not, be a hate group, but it will be considered one if it doesn't clean up its act.  There are now no shortage of Americans who view Black Lives Matter as no better than the Ku Klux Klan, and are part of the problem.  Too many leaders in Black Lives Matter seem to have a problem with America in general. 

Furthermore, Black Lives Matter is alienating too many black police officers (they do exist, and in increasing numbers) and community leaders.  The black police chiefs of Dallas and El Paso are certainly part of the answer, and creating civil UNREST while marching for civil RIGHTS can only make a well-intentioned effort into part of the problem, and not part of the answer. 

Black Lives Matter has too many extremist radicals among its ranks and if it's own leaders aren't purged and brought to bear, then the expression "Black Lives Matter" will bring visceral contempt when admiration should be the right response. 

And if Black Lives Matter is to remain part of the answer, then it must ask itself whether it wishes to follow the example (and the lousy and failed fate) of the 1960's black separatist movements, or if it wants to to adhere to an "improve and be pro-America" that follows the example of the late Martin Luther King. 

3) Black youth have not one but TWO deadly threats to confront: police bias and shootings, and black-on-black violence.  To argue about which one is worse is about as stupid as arguing whether food or water is less essential than the other.  In particular, black men have their health (and even lives) threatened when the cops drive up and slow down next to them...but also when cars filled with black men suddenly show up, with criminals all-too-ready to enforce their "turf". 

The accusation of a broken tail light can escalate into something violent or deadly, but so can a "Where you from?" question/demand of a black youth from another neighborhood.  BOTH are horrible.  BOTH are deadly. And BOTH have as much of a role in our modern society as a Confederate flag in a black church--they don't belong...period. 

Snoop Dogg and other black icons are embracing BOTH the police and civil rights leaders.  Love and kindness, and a dropping of the violent epithets and anti-police threats, is the strategy that will allow black and other American leaders the ability to emulate the success and admiration of Martin Luther King, and avoid the failure and derision of Louis Farrakhan, when it comes to improving the lives and status of African-Americans. 

4) We need our police, and we need credible and courageous leaders.  There are those who will demean and ignore the success of former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani in turning New York around, and in uniting that previously-divided city...and they will do it for political gains no matter how the nation suffers as a result. 

There is no reason for Dallas or other police officers to boycott and disrespect President Obama in his last few months in office, but there is every reason to get our President to acknowledge that his own rhetoric, or at the least his one-sided rhetoric, from both himself and past/former Attorney Generals is in dire need of improvement. 

President Obama, and the rest of us, have the choice to both decry and condemn (harder, MUCH harder) the monster in Dallas who proved he was no better than the monster in South Carolina who shot up so many innocents in a black church.   

We can't let either of these monsters separate us.  Demand reform and accountability from the police AND from Black Lives Matter. 

It should be emphasized that there is a bias, although not as deadly as many have contended, of police officers against blacks than against whites, and that community-based policing can fix that. 

It should also be emphasized that the statistics for black-on-black violence are ALSO frightening--and these CANNOT be dismissed by ANY leader wanting to improve the future of black Americans. 

And stupidity, whether it's for political gain or not, cannot be dismissed.  It's the right for any American to be "stuck on stupid", but it's also the right--nay, the responsibility--for Americans to keep their eyes on the ball and decry stupidity or political correctness wherever it exists.   

Because politically-correct or politically-obsessed stupidity is killing and destroying the lives of too many innocent Americans. 

• See also: ‘We Will Preserve Our Republic ... If We Have the Brains and Courage to Keep It’  

(Ken Alpern is a Westside Village Zone Director and Board member of the Mar Vista Community Council (MVCC), previously co-chaired its Planning and Outreach Committees, and currently is Co-Chair of its MVCC Transportation/Infrastructure Committee. He is co-chair of the CD11Transportation Advisory Committee and chairs the nonprofit Transit Coalition, and can be reached at  [email protected]. He also co-chairs the grassroots Friends of the Green Line at www.fogl.us. The views expressed in this article are solely those of Mr. Alpern.)

-cw

GUEST WORDS—(Editor’s Note: The traffic deaths of Alton Sterling, Philando Castile and five Dallas police officers over the past 10 days has produced torrent of public chatter. Most of it meaningless. Finger pointing … “Barack Obama is responsible for the deaths of those Dallas police officers”. Tired clichés … “We have to do better.” Advice from non-experts on who has to be more ‘respectful’ to whom. Not an honest to god solution in sight. CityWatch is posting this think piece by Zoe Weil because it offers real and meaningful solutions. I hope you will give them serious thought. Then, I hope you will commit yourself to taking serious action on one of the most important issues facing our country. We need more meaningful solutions, less meaningless talk. -kd)

●●

I am a humane educator, a person dedicated to creating a more just, peaceful, and sustainable world through education. This past week’s killings of Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, and five Dallas police officers underscore the necessity of educating a generation of solutionaries who have the capacity and the will to prevent such violence from continuing into the future. 

This morning I did what I want students in classrooms to do. I explored the interconnected systems that perpetuate violent deaths to determine major points of leverage to address them.

On a white board I visually created a mind map linking the many interconnected systems that contributed to the deaths of two black men at the hands of police officers and the subsequent death of five other police officers. Here’s what it looked like:  

In the center are the seven deaths. The surrounding boxes represent systems. The bullet points represent some of the problems within those systems, and the lines show where there are connections between the systems and the deaths.

I then considered what were the major leverage points for preventing violence in the future, (specifically toward black men by some police officers and toward police by some mentally disturbed and enraged black men), and I put a star in those boxes.

While I wanted to put a star in the gun control box (because I believe that meaningful gun control will ultimately prevent the preponderance of violent deaths), I know that this won’t happen without first addressing other systems. (And possibly, if these other systems are addressed effectively, gun control measures might not even be necessary.)

Not surprisingly, given my life’s work, I put a star in the educational system box. I also put stars in the political system box; the justice, legal and prison systems box; and the police training system box.

Why these systems?

First and foremost, the educational system is fundamental to all the others. Without excellent and equitable education that ensures that every child graduates not only literate and numerate, but also with proficient critical-, creative-, strategic-, and systems-thinking skills, and with deeply fostered values of empathy, integrity, responsibility, and kindness, we cannot hope to create wise, compassionate, systemic changes.

Education is the most significant key to ending racism; to transforming our political system into one that is functional, collaborative, and solutions-focused; to developing research skills and teamwork for problem-solving; and ultimately for ensuring that all the other systems on the mind map are equitable, healthy, and sustainable.

The political system offers another leverage point because if we can shift from polarization toward problem-solving; from gerrymandering toward collaboration; from ceding political office to the highest bidder toward real democracy, then we stand a chance of creating better and more effective laws that balance the protection of individual rights with the protection of our citizenry as a whole.

The justice, legal and prison systems rose to the top because the U.S. currently incarcerates 25% of the world’s prison population, even though we have only 5% of the world’s population, and our lower levels of social services and mental healthcare for those living in poverty mean that prisons become the places we often institutionalize the mentally ill.

Further, race-related inequity in prison sentences; prison time for such infractions as failure to pay fines; sentences for minor drug offenses; and a host of other factors that lead to prison time, perpetuate inequity, injustice, rage, fear, and poverty. And with our penal system’s punitive focus rather than a rehabilitation and educational focus, already-disenfranchised inmates face high recidivism rates. And because these ex-inmates are easily able to obtain guns upon release, the fear that leads to police shootings in confrontations is exacerbated.

Changes in police training – an area with which I’m admittedly least knowledgeable – seem to me to also offer significant opportunities for positive shifts, especially under the leadership of primarily black police officers, such as former police chief Donald Grady II. 

You may or may not find that my leverage points reflect your own thinking. That doesn’t matter.

What matters is that individually and collectively we engage in this systems-thinking, strategy-oriented, and solutions-focused process, and that we teach young people to do this in schools.

What matters is that we resist simplistic either/or responses and avoid pursuing information that only reinforces our already-established beliefs, confirming our existing biases and preventing new and better ideas from taking root.

I offer the following humane education-inspired steps that each of us can take today, tomorrow, and in the weeks, months, and years ahead so that events like those that occurred this past week become rare instead of routine. None represent brand new ideas; none are panaceas, and none offer quick solutions. Yet collectively I believe that they offer us a meaningful path toward building a less violent future.

Commit to listening and learning

• As a privileged white woman, I offer this heartfelt plea to other white Americans: commit to listening to the voices of black Americans who live with the legacy of centuries of racism, oppression, and injustice. Resist the tendency to assume that because racism isn’t as acute as it was during slavery or Jim Crow, or that because we twice elected Barack Obama to the presidency, that it no longer exists and isn’t a significant factor in the deaths of black men by police. In addition to the interview with Donald Grady II linked above, and the powerful memoir by Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me, read posts like this one to get you started. 
• Seek out, listen to, and converse with people who have different perspectives than yours, and don’t assume that they are racist because they are focused on the shootings of the Dallas police rather than on the black victims of police shootings, or that they are un-American if they are focused on gun control and holding police accountable. No name-calling. No vitriol. Listen, learn, and share your perspectives with respect so you can learn from and challenge each other.
• Seek out media that does not confirm your existing bias. Commit to reading, watching, and listening to differing perspectives.

Commit to finding solutions and taking action

• Create your own mind maps with groups of people with varying perspectives and ideas. Determine your own points of leverage. Choose one area and create an action plan to take concrete steps to influence change. Follow through with your plan.
• Engage in democracy. This may sound trite and simplistic given the problems with our democracy, but we have no democracy at all if we don’t engage with it. Contact your elected officials. Express your specific suggestions and ideas for change. Support collaborative- and solutionary-focused candidates with viable policy platforms and realistic plans for reaching out to others for feasible positive changes.
• Participate in the educational system. You do not have to be a teacher, school administrator, student, or parent to have a voice. Every citizen has a role to play in transforming education so that it is solutionary-focused  and helps students harness their own capacities to address racism and violence in the U.S. (and beyond). Until and unless we prepare students for their critical roles in solving these pervasive and entrenched problems we will be limiting our most powerful capacity to create a more just and healthy future.
• Put your particular skills and knowledge to use. If you are in law, law enforcement, or corrections, direct your knowledge and expertise toward meaningful solutions rather than side-taking. This may be difficult and feel risky, but now is your time to be a hero. Speak out with your best ideas.

 If you are a teacher, create lesson plans to bring these thorny, complex problems to your students so they can work together to find answers through good research, deep thinking, and committed problem-solving.

If you are a social worker or psychologist, bring your expertise to help the public understand and resist our tendencies to polarize, think simplistically, and confirm our own biases. Bring people of different races and backgrounds together to listen and learn from one another and build bridges of understanding, empathy, and solidarity.

Whatever your work, profession, or field of expertise, commit to using your knowledge in a positive way to help our country come together with real answers, not soundbites.

Last night I drove past a church with a sign out front that read: "Pray for the families of the victims in Dallas." I wanted to simultaneously shout with frustration and cry with sorrow.

That a church of all places would ask us to pray only for the families of the Dallas police and not also for the families of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling, broke my heart and, momentarily, dashed my hopes for change.

Especially now, we must enlarge our capacity for empathy.

Yet even if this particular church were to have written on its sign, “Pray for all the families of the victims of this week’s terrible violence,” I would have still felt frustrated.

We must do more than pray. We must act.

(Zoe Weil is the president of the Institute for Humane Education  (IHE), which offers online graduate degrees in comprehensive Humane Education; solutionary-focused programs and workshops; and an award-winning free resource center. Zoe has given six TEDx talks including her acclaimed “The World Becomes What You Teach.”  She is the author of numerous books, including: The World Becomes What We Teach: Educating a Generation of Solutionaries (2016) This perspective was posted most recently at the excellent Common Dreams.)  Photo credit: Stephen Melkisethian/cc/flickr

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EDUCATION POLITICS--Many parents and educators are outraged by the over-testing and misuse of testing that has been embedded in federal policy since the enactment of No Child Left Behind in 2002. No high-performing nation in the world tests every child every year in grades 3-8, as we have since the passage of NCLB.

Young children sit for exams that last up to 15 hours over two weeks. The fate of their teachers rests on their performance. Parents remember taking tests in school that lasted no more than one class period for each subject. Their tests were made by their teachers, not by a multinational corporation. Parents can’t understand how testing became an endurance trial and the goal of education.

Politicians claim that the tests are necessary to inform parents and teachers and the public how children in one state are doing as compared to their peers in other states. But this information is already reported by the federal test, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Parents have figured out that the tests don’t serve any purpose other than to rank their child. No one is allowed to see the test questions after the test. No child receives a diagnosis of what they know and don’t know. They receive only a score. In every state, the majority of children have been ranked as “failures” because the testmakers adopted a passing mark that was guaranteed to fail close to 70% of children. Parents have learned that the passing mark is not objective; it is arbitrary. It can be set to pass everyone, pass no one, or pass some percentage of children.

In the past 14 years, parents have seen the destruction of neighborhood schools, based on their test scores. They have seen beloved teachers fired unjustly, because of their students’ test scores. They have seen the loss of time for the arts, physical education, and anything else that is not tested. They have seen a change in their local public schools that they don’t like, as well as a loss of control to federal mandates and state authorities.

In the past, testing companies warned that tests should be used only for the purpose for which they were designed. Now, these corporations willingly sell their tests without warning about misuse. A test of fourth grade reading tests fourth grade reading. It should not be used to rank students, to humiliate students, to fire teachers and principals, or to close schools. But it is.

Communities have been devastated by the closing of their neighborhood schools.

Communities have seen their schools labeled “failing,” based on test scores, and taken over by the state or national corporate charter chains.

Based on test scores, punishments abound: for students, teachers, principals, schools, and communities.

This is madness!

What can we as citizens do to stop the destruction of our children, their schools, and our dedicated educators?

Opt out of the tests.

Use the power of the powerless: Say NO. Do not participate. Withdraw your consent from actions that harm your child. Withdrawal of consent in an unjust system. That’s the force that brought down Communist regimes in Eastern Europe. Vaclav Havel and Lech Walensa said no. They were not alone. Hundreds of thousands stood with them, and the regimes with their weapons and tanks and heavy armor folded. Because the people said no.

Opting out of the tests is the only tool available to parents, other than defeating the elected officials of your state (which is also a good idea, but will take a very long time to bear fruit). One person can’t defeat the governor and the local representatives. But one person can refuse to allow their child to take the toxic tests.

The only tool and the most powerful tool that parents have to stop this madness is to refuse to allow their children to take the tests.

Consider New York. A year ago, Governor Andrew Cuomo was in full attack mode against teachers and public schools, while showering praise on privately managed charters. He vowed to “break the monopoly” known as public education. The New York State Board of Regents was controlled by members who were in complete sympathy with Cuomo’s agenda of Common Core, high-stakes testing, and evaluating teachers by test scores.

But in 2015, about a quarter million children refused the state tests. Albany went into panic mode. Governor Cuomo convened a commission to re-evaluate the Common Core, standards, and testing. Almost overnight, his negative declarations about education changed in tone, and he went silent. The legislature appointed new members, who did not share the test-and-punish mentality. The chair of the New York State Board of Regents decided not to seek re-appointment after a 20-year career on that board. The Regents elected Dr. Betty Rosa, a veteran educator who was actively supported by the leaders of the opt out movement.

Again in 2016, the opt out movement showed its power. While official figures have not yet been released, the numbers evidently match those of 2015. More than half the students in Long Island opted out. Federal and state officials have issued warnings about sanctions, but it is impossible to sanction huge numbers of schools in middle-class and affluent communities. The same officials have no problem closing schools in poor urban districts, treating citizens there as chess pawns, but they dare not offend an organized bloc in politically powerful communities.

The opt out movement has been ridiculed by critics, treated by the media as a front for the teachers’ union, belittled by the former Secretary of Education as “white suburban moms” who were disappointed that their child was not so bright after all, stereotyped as privileged white parents with low-performing children, etc. There are indeed black and Hispanic parents who are part of the opt out movement. Their children and their schools suffer the greatest penalties in the current testing madness. In New York City, where opt out numbers were tiny, parents were warned that their children would not be able to enter the middle school or the high school of their choice if they opted out.

Thus far, the opt out movement has not been discouraged or slowed by these tactics of ridicule and intimidation. The conditions have not changed, so the opt out movement will continue.

The reality is that the opt out movement is indeed a powerful weapon. It is the one weapon that makes governors, legislators, and even members of Congress afraid of public opinion and public action. They are afraid because they don’t know how to stop parents from opting out. They can’t control opt out parents, and they know it. They offer compromises, promises for the future, but all of this is sham. They have not let go of the testing hammer. And they will not until opt out becomes the norm, not the exception.

In some communities in New York, opting out is already the norm. If politicians and bureaucrats continue on their reckless course of valuing test scores more than children, the opt out movement will not be deterred.

Save your child. Save your schools. Stop the corporate takeover of public education. You have the power. Say no. Opt out.

(Diane Ravitch is a historian of education and Research Professor of Education at New York University. Posted earlier at Diane’s blog and at Common Dreams.) 

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EDITOR’S PICK--On Monday America celebrated the 240th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, which condemned King George III for “(obstructing) the Administration of Justice.” 

On Tuesday the American left celebrated as the federal government obstructed the administration of justice on behalf of one of its ruling families, the Clintons. 

Last week the attorney general of the United States met with former President Bill Clinton, whose wife and foundation were under FBI investigation. They both insisted nothing untoward happened. Days later The New York Times reported that Hillary Clinton might offer Lynch a position in her administration. 

Over the holiday weekend the Obama administration announced that President Obama would fly to North Carolina with Clinton aboard Air Force One in order to campaign with her. Americans would, in part, foot the bill for the travel. 

On Tuesday FBI Director James Comey called a supposedly impromptu press conference to announce his findings in the investigation of Clinton’s private email server. He began by announcing that nobody knew what he was about to say, which seems implausible given that Obama was preparing to go onstage with Clinton at the time. Is it even within the realm of imagination that Obama would stand next to Clinton hours after Comey announced the intent to prosecute her? Of course not. 

Then, Comey proceeded to lay out all the reasons why Clinton should have been indicted: She set up multiple private email servers, all of which were vulnerable to hack; she did not set them up in order to use one mobile device, as she has so often stated; she transmitted and received highly classified material; her team deleted emails that could have contained relevant and classified information; she knew that classified information was crossing her server. He concluded that Clinton’s team was “extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.” 

This was all criminal activity. 

But Clinton is a member of the Royal Family. Thus, said Comey, she was innocent. Comey tried to say he wouldn’t recommend prosecution because she didn’t have the requisite intent, but the law doesn’t require intent; it requires merely “gross negligence” under 18 U.S.C. 793. In fact, even the level of intent required to charge under statutes like 18 U.S.C. 1924 and 18 U.S.C. 798 was clearly met: the intent to place classified information in a nonapproved, non-classified place. 

Nonetheless, Clinton would be allowed to roam free — and become president. “To be clear,” Comey intoned, “this is not to suggest that in similar circumstances, a person who engaged in this activity would face no consequences. To the contrary, those individuals are often subject to security or administrative sanctions. But that is not what we are deciding now.” 

One rule for the peons, one for the potentates. 

This is the Wilsonian legacy, finally achieved after a century of waiting: the Big Man (or Woman), unanswerable to the law, approved by the population without regard to equality under the law. We now elect our dictators. And they are unanswerable to us — except, presumably, once every four years. The commonfolk, on the other hand, find themselves on the wrong side of the government gun every day. 

Tyranny doesn’t start with jackboots. It begins with the notion that a different law applies to the powerful than to the powerless. Under Barack Obama tyranny has become a way of life. Ronald Reagan always said that freedom was one generation away from extinction. It looks like we’ve finally found that generation.

(Ben Shapiro, 31, is a graduate of UCLA and Harvard Law School, a radio host on KTTH 770 Seattle and KRLA 870 Los Angeles, Editor-in-Chief of TruthRevolt.org, [[hotlink]] and Senior Editor-at-Large of Breitbart News. He is the New York Times bestselling author of Bullies: How the Left's Culture of Fear and Intimidation Silences Americans.  This piece was posted most recently at Freedoms Back.) 

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NEW GEOGRAPHY-An unconventional, sometimes incoherent, resistance arises to the elites who keep explaining why changes that hurt the middle class are actually for its own good. 

The Great Rebellion is on and where it leads nobody knows. 

Its expressions range from Brexit to the Trump phenomena and includes neo-nationalist and unconventional insurgent movements around the world. It shares no single leader, party or ideology. Its very incoherence, combined with the blindness of its elite opposition, has made it hard for the established parties across what’s left of the democratic world to contain it. 

What holds the rebels together is a single idea: the rejection of the neo-liberal crony capitalist order that has arisen since the fall of the Soviet Union. For two decades, this new ruling class could boast of great successes: rising living standards, limited warfare, rapid technological change and an optimism about the future spread of liberal democracy. Now, that’s all fading or failing. 

Living standards are stagnating, vicious wars are raging, poverty-stricken migrants are pouring across borders and class chasms are growing. Amidst this, the crony capitalists and their bureaucratic allies have only grown more arrogant and demanding.  But the failures of those who occupy what Lenin called “the commanding heights” are obvious to most of the citizens on whose behalf they claim to speak and act. 

The Great Rebellion draws on five disparate and sometimes contradictory causes that find common ground in frustration with the steady bureaucratic erosion of democratic self-governance: class resentment, racial concerns, geographic disparities, nationalism, and cultural identity. Each of these strains appeals to different constituencies, but together they are creating a political Molotov cocktail. 

Class Conflict--The Brexit vote reflected the class aspect of the Rebellion. The London Times post-election analysis, notes socialist author James Heartfield, found the upper classes 57 percent for “Remain,” the upper middle class fairly divided, while everyone below them went roughly two-thirds for “Leave.” It doesn’t get much plainer than that. 

This dissent reflects the consequences of the globalization celebrated by elites in both parties. Britain’s industrial workforce, once the wonder of the world, is half as large was as just two decades ago. The social status of the British worker, even among the Labour grandees who pay them lip service, has been greatly diminished, notes scholar Dick Hobbs, himself a product of blue collar east London. “There are parts of London,” he writes, “where the pubs are the only economy.” 

As labor has struggled, writes Heartfield, “the Labour Party became more distant, metropolitan and elitist. It sought to re-write the party’s policy to mirror its own concerns, and also to diminish working people’s aspirations for social democratic reform in their favour.” 

A similar scenario has emerged here in America, where corporations -- especially those making consumer goods -- have grown fat on access to Chinese, Mexican and other foreign labor. Like their British counterparts, the U.S. working class is falling into social chaos, with declining marriage and church attendance rates, growing drug addiction, poor school performance and even declining life expectancy. Even during the primary campaign, as both Sanders and Trump railed against globalization, United Technologies saw fit to announce the movement of a large plant form Indianapolis, where about 1,500 jobs were lost, to Monterrey, Mexico. 

And much as the “Leave” wave crested in just those parts of the U.K. where trade with Europe is highest, so is Trump support highest in the Southern states that now dominate what remains of American manufacturing. 

Race and Ethnicity--Ethnic minorities and immigrants have now become core constituents of progressive parties in many countries -- the Socialists in France, the British Labour Party and the Democratic Party here in America. In Britain, it never occurred to party leaders that most new jobs created during the Blair and Brown regimes went to newcomers. One can admire the pluck of Polish plumbers, Latvian barmaids, Greek waiters and French technicians and still note that many of these jobs could have gone to native born British. This includes the children of the mostly non-white commonwealth immigrants who are now part of the country’s national culture. 

The parallels in America -- a much larger, richer and more diverse country -- are striking. Silicon Valley and corporate America love to bring in glorified indentured servants from abroad, earning the assent of Hillary Clinton and the corporate shill wing of the GOP. Only Trump and Sanders have attacked this program, which has cost even trained American workers their jobs. 

As tends to occur when race and ethnicity intrude, ugliness here seeps into the Great Rebellion. Trump has consciously and irresponsibly stoked ethnic resentments tied to immigration. Anti-EU continental Europeans -- notably in Eastern Europe but also France’s Marine Le Pen -- often outdo our TV billionaire’s provocations. 

Geographic Disparities--The Brexit vote also revealed a chasm between the metropolitan core and the rest of the country. The urban centers of London, Manchester and Liverpool all voted Remain. Central London has benefited from being where the world’s super rich park their money. The devastation of the industrial economy in the periphery has hardly touched the posh precincts of the premier global city. 

In contrast, the more distant, often working class, suburbs of London and other cities voted to Leave. Small towns followed suit. The Brexit vote, suggests analyst Aaron Renn, demonstrated that arrogant urbanites, seeing themselves as the exclusive centers of civilization, ignore those who live outside the “glamour zone” at their own peril. 

Similar voting patterns can be seen in the US. The countryside, except for retirement havens of the rich, has gone way to the right. The suburbs are tilting that way, and could become more rebellious as aggressive “disparate impact” policies force communities to reshape themselves to meet HUD’s social engineering standards -- for example if they are too middle class or too white -- even if there is no proof of actual discrimination. 

Needless to say, such policies could enhance the geographic base of the Great Rebellion, including among middle-class minorities who are now responsible for much of our current suburban growth. Already the small towns and outer suburbs have signed up with Trump; if he can make clear the threat to suburbia from the planners, he could, despite his boorish ugliness, win these areas and the election. 

Nationalism and Cultural Identity--Nationalism gets a bad rap in Europe, for historically sound reasons. Yet these national cultures also have produced much of the world’s great literature and music, and the world’s most beautiful cities. Yet in contemporary Europe, these national cultures are diminishing. Instead the crony capitalist regime gives us Rem Koolhaas’ repetitious generic city, often as stultifying as the most mindless suburban mall. 

Not just buildings, but historic values are also being undermined, as universities and even grade schools seek to replace cherished values with post-modernist, politically correct formulations. English students at Yale protest having to read Chaucer, Shakespeare or Milton, the foundation writers of the world’s common language whose greatest sin, it appears, was to be both English and male. 

Of course, cultural and political nationalism often shows an ugly side. But everyone who shouts for the British national soccer team or chants USA at the Olympics is not a fascist; they are just people who love their country. Yet academia, the shaper of the young and impressionable, now sometimes regard any positive assessment of America as the land of opportunity or even the American flag as “micro-aggressions.” Brits and Americans have much to be ashamed about in their history, but their glorious achievements remain inspirational to many who find attempts to replace them with some tortured global syncretism foolish and counterproductive. 

Governance and Localism--When Brits told pollsters why they had voted to leave the EU, notes James Heartfield, immigration and national identity ranked high but democracy and self-governance was at the top of the list. In contrast, classes who supported remain—the mainstream media, academia, the legal and financial establishments—increasingly see themselves as rightful rulers, the benighted masses be damned. 

This anti-EU rebellion is hardly limited to Britain. Since 2005, French, Danish and Dutch voters have voted against closer EU ties. Hostility to the EU, as recorded by Pew, is actually stronger in many key European countries, including France, than it is in Britain. And after the Brexit vote, there are already moves for similar exit referenda in several European countries. 

But like Washington bureaucrats who can’t be bothered to pay much attention to the views of the underlings of the Heartland, the Eurocrats want to double down. The Germans, the effective rulers of Europe, have reacted to Brexit with talk about ways to “deepen” the EU, creating the basis for what some have argued would be essentially “a super-state.” This policy approach seems about as brilliant as that of Lord North, whose response to American agitation was to further tighten London’s screws. 

This arrogance, in part, stems from what one writer at the Atlantic has called the war on the stupid.  In this formulation, those with elite degrees, including the hegemons on Wall Street and Silicon Valley, dismiss local control as rule by the Yahoos. The progressive ideal of government by experts -- sometimes seen as “the technocracy” -- may sound good in Palo Alto or London, but often promises a dim future for the middle class. Expert regulation, often with green goals in mind, take hard-earned gains like car and home ownership and cheap air travel all but out of reach for the middle class, while keeping them around for the globe-trotting elites. 

Where does this go?--The Great Rebellion is, if nothing else, politically incoherent. 

Some conservatives hail it as a harbinger of the decline of progressivism.  Traditional leftists hope for the return of state socialism, directed from national capitals. Racists see a vindication for their world view. Libertarians hail de-regulation while others, on the nationalist right, embrace the authoritarian nationalism of Vladimir Putin. 

Yet for all its divergent views, the Great Rebellion has accomplished this: the first serious blow to the relentless ascendency of neo-liberal crony capitalism. The revels have put the issue of the super-state and the cause of returning power closer to the people back on the agenda. The Great Rebellion allows localities relief from overweening regulations, cities to be as urban as they want, and the periphery choose how they wish to develop. 

The Rebellion also allows us to move beyond enforced standards of racial “balance” and reparations, replacing the chaos of unenforced borders and enforced “diversity” with something more gradual and organic in nature. Our hope on race and ethnicity lies not in rule-making from above, but in allowing the multiculturalism of the streets to occur, as is rapidly does, in suburban schoolyards, soccer pitches and Main Streets across the Western world. 

National cultures do not need to be annihilated but allowed to evolve. In Texas, California, and across the southwestern, Spanish phraseology, Mexican food and music are already very mainstream. Without lectures from the White House or preening professors, African-American strains will continue to define our national culture, particularly in the south. In Europe, few object to couscous on bistro menus, falafel on the streets and, in Britain, the obligatory curry at the pub. 

The Great Rebellion is much more than the triumph of nativism, stupidity and crudeness widely denounced in the mainstream media. Ethnic integration and even globalization will continue, but shaped by the wishes of democratic peoples, not corporate hegemons or bureaucratic know-it-alls. We can now once again aspire to a better world -- better because it will be one that people, not autocrats, have decided to make.

(Joel Kotkin is a R.C. Hobbs Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and executive director of the Center for Opportunity Urbanism in Houston. His newest book is “The Human City: Urbanism for the Rest of Us.”) This piece first appeared in NewGeography.com.  Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

EDITOR’S PICK--Renowned lawyer and professor Alan Dershowitz penned an op-ed piece for The Hill in which he says James Comey reached the correct conclusion in Hillary Clinton's email scandal, but that the FBI Director might have exceeded his authority getting there. 

"[Comey] was certainly correct in his ultimate recommendation. The evidence in this case, as he described it, would not have justified a criminal prosecution," Dershowitz wrote. "There is simply no precedent for indicting a former secretary of state for carelessness, even extreme carelessness." 

However, Dershowitz identified four curious statements the FBI director made that suggest Comey overstepped his bounds:

• The FBI is an investigative agency; it does not make prosecutorial decisions like Comey outlined Tuesday.

• It's rare and highly unusual for an FBI director to articulate opinions — Comey called Clinton "extremely careless" — about the behavior of a subject.

• Comey was obtuse in his "verbal formulation" of whether emails where classified or not.

• Comey implied that some Clinton aides might lose their security clearance over this; again, out of the FBI's purview.

So though Dershowitz lauds Comey as honorable and is comfortable with the outcome, he is uncomfortable with the power wielded by someone with the job title of FBI director. (Read the rest.) 

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NEW GEOGRAPHY-The issue of race has scarred the entirety of U.S. history. Although sometimes overshadowed by the arguably more deep-seated issue of class, the racial divide is a festering wound that decent Americans, including politicians, genuinely want to heal. 

Decency and politics have a tenuous relationship, but this year, one candidate has exacerbated racial tensions in a way not seen since the days of segregationist George Wallace and Richard Nixon’s polarizing vice president, Spiro Agnew. Donald Trump, through his outbursts and incendiary rhetoric, opened the door to a new period of even greater racial antagonism. 

Trump promises to “make America great again,” but his divisive approach leaves us both weaker and even more afflicted with racial identity politics. Just as neo-Nazis and old-style racists have rallied to his cause, Trump’s intemperance also has energized ethnic nationalists, particularly in Hispanic communities. Among America’s growing Muslim population, perhaps no one has served as a better recruiter for Islamists, who agree with him that their religion and culture is anathema to America. The triumph of Brexit -- in part driven by immigration -- may encourage this further. 

Not all the blame for America’s racial discord falls to Trump, of course. Well before his rise to political prominence, Americans had grown pessimistic about race relations, which constitutes something of a failure by an administration that once promised greater racial unity. The president and Hillary Clinton, who have used racial politics to motivate minorities against the perceived racism of middle and working class whites, share responsibility for the deterioration. And liberal media, academics and elected officials can’t be particularly proud of their records of promoting tolerance and multiculturalism. 

White America Betrayed?

In recent years, large swaths of working whites, like their British counterparts, have seen their jobs disappear and old social orders upended, fueling anger and a general sense of loss, reflected in rapidly rising morbidity and suicide rates. As Pittsburgh psychologist Kenneth Thompson puts it: “Their social habitat is strained, and the strain is showing up in a looming body count.” 

Trump has exploited their anger by turning it on immigrants, characterizing Mexicans as rapists and calling for border walls, immigration bans and tougher trade deals. However cruel and misguided, Trump’s racial divisiveness resonates with these blue-collar whites, as well as among some more affluent middle-class whites. 

In reality, Trump is not a classic racist, but rather an ugly opportunist willing to use ethnic divides for his own benefit. He’s been compared to Adolph Hitler, a monster whose philosophy revolved around race, but Trump has no real theory that extends beyond self-glorification, resentment, and attracting the fetching female; “The Art of the Deal” is not “Mein Kampf.” 

Trump will play the race card as a way to satisfy his narcissistic need for enthusiastic admirers. This does not mean his approach does not echo the racism of the past. His claim of bias by a U.S.-born judge of Mexican descent, as well as his suggestions that Muslim jurists are incapable of ruling independently, recall the worst of the pre-Civil Rights South. His proposals to ban Muslim immigrants in general recall approaches in the late 19th and early 20th centuries which targeted Chinese, Japanese and, ultimately eastern and southern Europeans. 

Other Negative Forces 

Progressives – including the media claque and academic elites -- have shown little sympathy for the white working class and have been dismissive of its embrace of Trump’s candidacy, as characterized by Salon’s recent description: “White America’s sad last stand.” 

Instead of trying to understand the deep frustrations of the white middle class, it’s not unusual for progressives to express solidarity with racial minorities and condemn white privilege. 

Clinton takes it a step further, stoking minority fear-mongers to generate badly need enthusiasm. Accused of using “dog whistles” to attract racists against candidate Obama in 2008, Clinton now courts racial nationalists, including some in the Black Lives Matter movement, race-baiter supremo Al Sharpton, and La Raza. 

Interestingly, the fury against white “racism” is most fully throated and often most violent in white, deep-blue bastions such as Portland, Seattle, San Francisco and Boston. It’s in these cities, ironically, where minorities increasingly are victims of gentrification, forced out of their neighborhoods to make way for affluent whites. 

At the same time, liberal cities’ planning, energy and environmental policies do not improve life for the working- and middle-class populations, including many minorities. Yet while more highly paid blue-collar jobs disappear, working-class communities frequently are the ones absorbing large numbers of undocumented immigrants. The affluent, “enlightened” liberals in places like Chicago’s Gold Coast, west Los Angeles and the upper east side of Manhattan may get their servants from these populations, but rarely are they neighbors or competitors in the job market. 

These are fruits of America’s failed immigration system, an issue that even Latinos in this country are eager to resolve. Had Trump not crossed so many lines of decency, he might have seized the day and turned immigration policy into a huge plus, earning the support of the solid majority of Americans who agree that the border needs to be tightened. 

But by painting Latinos as drug dealers and criminals and suggesting that Muslims, per se, represent a security danger, Trump has made himself the issue and squandered the opportunity. 

Trump’s willingness to “tell it like it is” may have won over some segments of the population, but it’s fanciful to believe, as some right-wingers  carry him to the White House. His assaults on issues such as illegal immigration and the need to closely monitor potential terrorists may resonate, but his stridency, and lack of respect for basic decencies, have alienated much of the population. 

Multiculturalism of the Streets 

The good news is that while race seems to have paralyzed politics, society is becoming more integrated. Once lily-white suburbs are increasingly multi-racial, even as some core cities become less diverse. What the Mexican journalist Sergio Munoz once called “the multiculturalism of the streets” is thriving, even as politicians promote division. 

A key indicator is the rising rate of racial intermarriage. Pew surveys show that mixed-race couples account for 15 percent of marriages, including nearly 10 percent of white marriages, 17 percent of black, 26 percent of Hispanic and 28 percent of Asian marriages. This is sure to blur racial distinctions in the decades ahead. If you live in a diverse region like Southern California, you see this mixed-race reality all the time -- at grade school graduations, Angels games, in restaurants and Fourth of July parades. This is the new America. 

This 21st century nation-of-immigrants picture is unlikely to stir the soul of the celebrity billionaire with a taste for 24-karat gold plating on everything from his seat belts to his sinks. Trump is in it only to win, because winning is everything to him. The problem is Trump’s vanity campaign will probably cost Republicans  the White House, leaving America bluer, more regulated and less responsive to the needs of white workers. In this sense, Trumpism represents something akin to Marx’s “opium of the masses,” an emotional balm that only provides temporary relief. 

Clinton’s embrace of racial nationalists, on the other hand, forces her to lead from a position that is fundamentally partisan and mean-spirited. But it is Trump who threatens racial progress more directly, in a more irresponsible and inflammatory fashion. In this case, at least, the despicable is far preferable to the dangerous. 

The best hope here is that, once this awful and dangerous lout is dismissed from the national sne, our racial wounds will be allowed again to heal. The spark for this will not come from the venal political and media class, but through day-to-day interactions in the communities we increasingly share.

(Joel Kotkin is a R.C. Hobbs Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and executive director of the Center for Opportunity Urbanism in Houston. His newest book is “The Human City: Urbanism for the Rest of Us.”) Trump protest photo by i threw a guitar at him.   Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

GUEST COMMENTARY-The Pentagon's long-awaited decision to end its ban on transgender people serving openly in the U.S. military has been widely praised as a move toward equality, full benefits and their right to serve "without having to lie about who they are." In a speech Thursday at the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Ash Carter referenced the up to 15,000 transgender people now estimated to be serving silently, calling them "talented and trained Americans who are serving their country with honor and distinction (and) who’ve proven themselves.” 

Though many details of the shift remain to be worked out, advocates generally praised the change as "a matter of principle." Capt. Sage Fox, a U.S. Army Reserve officer who transitioned in 2012: "This is about equality, about civil rights, (about) recognizing the decency of human beings (and) that we are all equal." 

So far, all good. Still, the Pentagon announcement was swathed in troubling language and murky on many details, including its plausibly bloody end goal. Chelsea Manning and other activists rightly questioned the laying down of sometimes random conditions for serving. 

More alarmingly, it's hard not to raise a skeptical eye at the Pentagon's bellicose wording given the likely rise to power of Hillary Clinton, the "hawk's hawk" who never met a U.S.- funded, often-recklessly-rationalized war she didn't like. 

In his speech, Carter cited the military's need "to avail ourselves of all talent possible in order to remain what we are now -- the finest fighting force the world has ever known.” He insisted, “We don’t want barriers unrelated to a person’s qualification to serve preventing us from recruiting or retaining the soldier (who) can best accomplish the mission" -- without (no surprise here) expressing any interest in questioning that mission, its underlying lies about American exceptionalism, or its last 15 years of disastrous results. Saving the scariest for last, he intoned, "We have to have access to 100% of America's population." 

For what, [[[ https://www.thenation.com/article/left-ought-worry-about-hillary-clinton-hawk-and-militarist-2016/ ]]] the attentive among us really should ask. When we do, these "milestones" (a person with a vagina may finally oversee our drone assassination program) can kinda pale.

(Abby Zimet writes for Common Dreams … where this perspective was first posted.) Photo: Sergeant Shane Ortega, 28, one of the military's first openly trans members.

Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams. 

GUEST WORDS--We hear a lot about patriotism, especially around the Fourth of July. But in 2016 we’re hearing about two very different types of patriotism. One is an inclusive patriotism that binds us together. The other is an exclusive patriotism that keeps others out. 

Through most of our history we’ve understood patriotism the first way. We’ve celebrated the values and ideals we share in common: democracy, equal opportunity, freedom, tolerance and generosity.

We’ve recognized these as aspirations to which we recommit ourselves on the Fourth of July. 

This inclusive patriotism prides itself on giving hope and refuge to those around the world who are most desperate -- as memorialized in Emma Lazarus’ famous lines engraved on the Statue of Liberty: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” 

By contrast, we’re now hearing a strident, exclusive patriotism. It asserts a unique and superior “Americanism” that’s determined to exclude others beyond our borders. 

Donald Trump famously wants to ban all Muslims from coming to America, and to build a wall along the Mexican border to keep out Mexicans. 

Exclusive patriotism tells us to fear foreign terrorists in our midst -- even though almost every terrorist attack since 9/11 has been perpetrated by American citizens or holders of green cards living here for a decade or more. 

Exclusive patriotism is not welcoming or generous. Since the war in Syria began in 2011, we’ve allowed in only 3,127 out of the more than 4 million refugees who have fled that nation. 

Republicans in Congress reacted to the Orlando massacre with a proposal to ban all refugees to the United States indefinitely. Rep. Brian Babin of Texas wants to place “an immediate moratorium on all refugee resettlement programs … to keep America safe and defend our national security.”

With El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua convulsed in drug-related violence, thousands of unaccompanied children and nearly as many mothers and children have fled northward. But rather than welcome them, we’ve detained them at the border and told others contemplating the journey to stay home. 

Another difference: Inclusive patriotism instructs us to join together for the common good.

We’ve understood this to require mutual sacrifice -- from frontier settlers who helped build one another’s barns, to neighbors who volunteered for the local fire department, to towns and cities that sent off their boys to fight wars for the good of all. 

Such patriotism requires taking on a fair share of the burdens of keeping America going -- including a willingness to pay taxes. 

But the strident voices of exclusive patriotism tell us that no sacrifice should be required, especially by the well off. 

Exclusive patriotism celebrates the acquisitive individual and lone entrepreneur. It tells us that taxes on the wealthy slow economic growth and deter innovation. 

Trump wants to reduce the highest income tax rate to 25 percent from today’s 39.6 percent. No matter that this would result in higher deficits or cuts in Social Security, Medicare and programs for the poor. They’re supposedly good for growth. 

A third difference: Inclusive patriotism has always sought to protect our democracy -- defending the right to vote and seeking to ensure that more Americans are heard. 

But the new voices of exclusive patriotism seem not to care about democracy. They’re willing to inundate it with big money that buys off politicians, and they don’t seem to mind when politicians create gerrymandered districts that suppress the votes of minorities or erect roadblocks to voting such as stringent voter ID requirements. 

Finally, inclusive patriotism doesn’t pander to divisiveness, as does the alternative patriotism that focuses on who “doesn’t belong” because of racial or religious or ethnic differences. Inclusive patriotism isn’t homophobic or sexist or racist. 

To the contrary, inclusive patriotism confirms and strengthens the “we” in “we the people of the United States.” 

So will it be inclusive or exclusive patriotism? A celebration of “us” or contempt for “them”?

Inclusive patriotism is our national creed. It is born of hope. Mean-spirited, exclusive patriotism is new to our shores. It is born of fear. 

Let us hope that this Fourth of July and in the months and years ahead we choose inclusion over exclusion, hope over fear.

(Robert Reich is Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy, University of California at Berkeley and the author of Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future, now in bookstores. This post originally appeared at RobertReich.org.)  Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

ALPERN AT LARGE--I'm hardly the first to get inconvenienced, hurt, and harmed by a United States airline (they've earned quite the reputation, haven't they?), but when it comes to my family, I'm especially incensed. And it's not exactly a shocker that United Airlines is particularly insensitive and downright cruel when it comes to the well-being of their customers ... but you knew that already, didn't you? 

And when it comes to one-stop flights in the Midwest (like Houston), when periodic storms roll in, and customers know they'll have their flights delayed for a few hours (not talking about the major downpours that last half a day or longer), that United Airlines is especially quick to cancel the flights altogether without having the personnel and planes to allow the flights to proceed when it's safe--leaving the travelers without any recourse...but you knew that already, didn't you? 

And when flights are delayed, United Airlines is especially quick to save a few bucks and do the operational and potentially dangerous risk of sending out their pilots and crew just before they're timed out for safety reasons, so it's oopsie, we're timed out, and a reasonable 3-4 hour delay for safety reasons is turned into a cancellation that sends their passengers straight to Hades...but you knew that already, didn't you? 

And when flights are unnecessarily cancelled, United Airlines is particularly unprepared to figure out how to house their stranded passengers in some nearby hotel, or to efficiently transfer luggage and commuters to another flight (even if the customers are willing to pay)...because, well, hey, who the heck else are you going to use on such short notice...but you knew that already, didn't you?

And if you ask if United Airlines can swing over another pilot, plane and crew to accommodate the scheduling/weather snafu, their people will look at you like it's CRAZY TALK!  But you knew that already, didn't you? 

And even when United Airlines unnecessarily cancels their connecting flights, and promises that you should keep your luggage (and Heaven forbid you should transfer to another airline's flight) with them to make it with you on their next flight, they'll--oopsie!--forget your luggage for up to 1-2 days...because that's YOUR problem.  But..you knew that already, didn't you? 

And when you try to contact an airport or United about your precious luggage and property, the only people you'll ever reach are calling center clones from India (who, to be fair, probably shouldn't be expected to know where the heck Knoxville, TN is) who provide catty, evasive, prepared, and confusing non sequiturs for every reasonable question you have...despite the fact that more local operators could be assigned to work with you better to get your luggage promptly.  But you knew that already, didn't you? 

And when the e-mails and texts state that your luggage and property is on their way, and you presume that the local drivers will work 24-7 to get your luggage to you, it shouldn't be that much of a shocker to get some call 24 hours later to learn that a local subcontractor just picked up your luggage and they'll be bringing it to you from the airport (where it's been sitting for about a day, despite what the e-mails and texts stated to the contrary)...yet you knew that already, didn't you? 

Because when United Airlines tell us it's "number one", we really don't have too much of a choice, do we, with respect to certain flight patterns...so we don't pay attention to WHICH FINGER United Airlines gives us when it says we're "number one"! 

...yet you knew THAT already, didn't you? 

But I'll give United Airlines props for being "number one", all right--when it comes to a "civil service mentality", a quasi-criminal disregard for the safety and welfare and consideration of the lives, property and quality of transportation for their paying customers, United Airlines (compared to the other callous and customer-contemptuous United States domestic airlines) is truly "number one". 

But you knew THAT already, didn't you?

(Ken Alpern is a Westside Village Zone Director and Board member of the Mar Vista Community Council (MVCC), previously co-chaired its Planning and Outreach Committees, and currently is Co-Chair of its MVCC Transportation/Infrastructure Committee. He is co-chair of the CD11Transportation Advisory Committee and chairs the nonprofit Transit Coalition, and can be reached at  [email protected]. He also co-chairs the grassroots Friends of the Green Line at www.fogl.us. The views expressed in this article are solely those of Mr. Alpern.)

-cw

CONNECTING CALIFORNIA--Sure, the sit-in in the House of Representatives didn’t deliver the vote on gun control legislation that was the stated purpose of the demonstration.

But that’s a very narrow way of looking at the results of the sit-in. Indeed, Democrats ought to call the demonstration a victory for one reason alone:

No one broke a hip.

Indeed, as I watched via Facebook and CSPAN late into Wednesday night, I must confess that I felt very worried about the Congressional members I saw. My worry was that someone would get hurt – doing all that standing late into the night, and holding up those posters.

I got especially worried when so many California Congressional members started speaking during prime time in California – and after 11p back on Capitol Hill. They looked awfully old, and that was even with the less than HD cell phone camera broadcasting their talks.

Grace Napolitano, who appeared for a while, is 79. Nancy Pelosi is 76. Maxine Waters is 77.

Even the California Congressional members who we think of as young are pretty old. My Congresswoman, Judy Chu, who looked like she was having a little trouble with one of the signs, is 62. Xavier Becerra is 58.

The good news is that I still recognized them. Congress has been so stalemated—and thus irrelevant—that it took a sit-in to get people really paying attention to Congress. It’s been years since many California Congressional members have tasted the limelight.

Of course, being unrecognizable is bad for a politician. But there are worse options. After all, they could be California Republicans.

(Joe Mathews writes the Connecting California column for Zócalo Public Square ... where this column originated.)

-cw

EDITOR’S PICK--In a major victory for American women, the US Supreme Court sent a powerful message on Monday in its Whole Woman’s Health v Hellerstedt decision: that laws purporting to protect women’s health while limiting access to abortion are an unconstitutional sham.

In a 5-3 decision, the court struck down a Texas law, called House Bill 2, responsible for shuttering more than half of the state’s clinics. The restrictions mandated that clinics become ambulatory surgical centers, adhering to wholly unnecessary hospital-like standards, and that doctors have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital even though hospitalization is almost never necessary after ending a pregnancy. The goal wasn’t to make abortion safer, of course, just impossible to obtain.

Ending a pregnancy is such a safe procedure that doctors would never be able to admit enough patients to a hospital in order to keep admitting privileges, and because abortions are so safe and common, maintaining the standards for a surgical center simply drained clinics of their resources. And anti-choice legislators know as much.

The court’s decision made clear the justices were not fooled, noting in the majority decision that “when directly asked at oral argument whether Texas knew of a single instance in which the new requirement would have helped even one woman obtain better treatment, Texas admitted that there was no evidence in the record of such a case.”

And in Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s concurring opinion, she wrote it was “beyond rational belief that HB 2 could genuinely protect the health of women, and certain that the law ‘would simply make it more difficult for them to obtain abortions.’” 

Lead plaintiff in the case, Amy Hagstrom Miller, founder and CEO of Whole Woman’s Health, released a statement saying that her clinics “treat our patients with compassion, respect and dignity – and today the supreme court did the same.”

She continued, “I want everyone to understand: you don’t mess with Texas, you don’t mess with Whole Woman’s Health and you don’t mess with this beautiful, powerful movement of people dedicated to reproductive health, rights, and justice.”

The ruling represents a significant loss for anti-abortion groups, who have been pushing Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers (Trap laws) over the last decade: as of this year, 24 states have some sort of law or policy that restricts abortion access through targeting the way providers work.

But the Whole Woman’s Health decision – which laid bare the way that these mandates constitute an undue burden on women seeking abortion – stands to put that years-long strategy in jeopardy. It will be that much harder for anti-choice legislators to shroud their policies in rhetoric about protecting women when the highest court in the country has essentially called the tactic nonsense.

For pro-choicers, the decision isn’t just a win, but a sticking point in the upcoming presidential election. Pro-choice organizations wasted no time releasing statements that tied the decision to how a Donald Trump presidency would be disastrous for women. Ilyse Hogue, president of Naral Pro-Choice America, says that Trump “is committed to appointing justices who will once again make abortion illegal across the country”. Stephanie Schriock, president of Emily’s List, noted that “extremist Republicans like Donald Trump should take note... women are paying attention and you’ll be hearing our voices loud and clear come November.”

Before November comes, though, American women can do some much-deserved celebrating in the wake of Monday’s decision. A strategy that aimed to limit our rights while invoking our protection has been proven impotent. A law that put tens of thousands of us in danger has been overturned. It is, finally, a good day.

(Jessica Valenti is the author of three books, including The Purity Myth: How America’s Obsession with Virginity is Hurting Young Women, which was recently made into a documentary. This perspective was posted most recently at Common Dreams.) 

-cw

GUEST WORDS--(Note: Both Presidential candidates, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, hold former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in high esteem. Kissinger has also been linked to widespread war crimes, alluded to in Stanley Kubrick’s anti-war film, Dr. Strangelove. In that film, Peter Sellers portrayed Henry Kissinger.) 

I offer this follow-up to comments I received in response to a recent CityWatch article on the prospects of fascism in the United States after the November 2016 Presidential election.  

One critic noted that the article made some important points, especially that fascism involves both racism and militarism, but it ignored two other important features of fascism: 

US Government Support for Fascism Abroad: This critic wrote that I failed to mention that the US government has trained and supported many fascistic regimes throughout the world, such as Saudi Arabia, Iran under the Shah, Philippines under Marcos, and Chile under Pinochet. In light of these precedents, this critic argued that what has been repeatedly pursued by government officials outside the United States could be readily let loose within the United States.

This comment is well taken, and there are many other examples past and present that confirm it. According to historian William Blum, the long, bi-partisan history of US foreign policy over the past 70 years contains dozens of executive actions and Congressionally funded programs to overthrow democratically-elected governments and support regimes that easily qualify as fascist, authoritarian, or totalitarian.

For example, through the School of the America’s, renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), the United States government has trained and equipped the police, army, and security agencies of many authoritarian regimes in Latin America. This record is readily available, including the identities of government officials who advocated this approach, such as Jean Kirkpatrick, the first US woman ambassador to the United Nations. 

In fact, some of those actors are currently in high-level government positions, such as Victoria Nuland, the Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs. Others, like Henry Kissinger, are waiting for the phone to ring in order to offer advice on how to continue and implement an openly militaristic US foreign policy, whether the next president is Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump. According to the late writer, Christopher Hitchens, Kissinger’s long foreign policy record is filled with enough blood and mayhem to justify prosecution at the International Court of Justice in The Hague. Nevertheless, both presidential candidates hold Kissinger in high esteem and seek his support. 

Authoritarian Work Places in the United States: I was also told that most Americans are already comfortable with a basic feature of fascism at their work places. In Germany Fuhrer means leader, and the organizing principle of the Third Reich was the primacy of the "leader.” In the United States most work places are no different, although we call the leader “the boss.” The constitutional freedoms enshrined in the Bill of Rights do not apply at work because the boss rules by fiat. This is the same authoritarian leader principle that characterized the Third Reich, unquestioned and unopposed executive authority.

I agree with this comment, too. Nearly all work places in the United States have an authoritarian, hierarchical organizational model. Even in unionized work environments, now employing less than 10 percent of the US work force, unions operate under detailed constraints. Their negotiated labor contracts contain a Management Rights provision in which unionized employees and their bargaining agents acknowledge the authority of management to determine and implement a company or agency’s mission. By their own agreement, unions are restricted to grievances and negotiated contracts related to working conditions only. Their activities at work places are clearly limited and closely monitored so they do not encroach on “the leader principle.”

In practice this means that employees have no right or authority to question any practices of management, other than such mundane categories as overtime pay and sick days.

As for the 90 percent of the work force in the United States that does not have the protection of a union contract, they work at the discretion of management. Such rights, as freedom of the press, freedom of association, and freedom of speech, stop at the work place door. This leader principle (i.e. the boss might be an SOB, but he is always right) is heavily socialized into all of us from an early age. 

False Equivalency of Trump and Clinton: A third criticism of my article was that I was mistaken to call out bi-partisan fascist tendencies and to therefore imply that a Clinton administration would also harbor dangerous fascist practices. Instead, I was told I should have focused my article on Donald Trump because he presents, by far, a much greater fascist danger. These critics then make, what strikes me, as a twisted argument. They argue that we first need to urgently support Hillary Clinton to stop a likely fascist, Donald Trump. But once Hillary Clinton is sworn into office, then we need to immediately build mass movements to oppose the assured military interventions she will unleash, as well as her status quo approach to domestic policy already presented by Clinton surrogates at the Democratic Party’s current Platform Committee. 

I realize my bi-partisan analysis took many readers, like this critic, by surprise because they consider fascism to be an extreme right-wing phenomenon, and they therefore attribute it to Donald Trump, including his successful appeals to white supremacists. No doubt about it, Trump’s racism and xenophobia are important features of fascism, but they are hardly the only ones. 

Fascism, as I previously explained, also includes the brute power of the state, especially the ability to use its police powers to spy on, surveil, and disrupt the political process, up to the point of incarceration, torture, and murder. This is hardly the monopoly of conservative Republicans. In fact, my inventory of fascistic precedents in modern US history included the Sabotage and Espionage Acts initiated by Democratic President Woodrow Wilson during WWI, the development of Cointelpro under FDR, another Democrat, the anti-Communist Cold War and domestic witch hunts that began in 1946 under Democratic President Truman, and authoritarian legislation partially authored by arch-liberal Democrat Hubert Humphrey (The Communist Control Act of 1954), portions of which were opposed by the Eisenhower Administration.  

As for mass and detailed personal surveillance of the US population, it is already extremely advanced, including all-embracing electronic snooping of computers, emails, text messages, voice messages, telephone calls, and snail mail. It is also important to note that much or this spying is not legal, but continues anyway with wide Congressional and Presidential support, despite extensive public exposure of illegal domestic surveillance by Edward Snowden.  

The other element of a fascist program, aggressive, preemptive warfare, is only possible through the Federal Government, although major new US invasions and occupations currently face serious political obstacles. Nevertheless, the neocons once associated with Vice President Cheney are hard at work again. They are making their case for more foreign US military interventions in their latest document: Extending American Power: Strategies to Expand U.S. Engagement in a Competitive World Order.  Furthermore, some of the neo-cons linked to the second Bush Jr. Administration, such as Robert Kagan, are now supporting and fund-raising for Hillary Clinton.

While one of the primary military tactics of the Obama Administration is an executive kill list implemented through drone assassinations, it appears that like bombing campaigns, these aerial military tactics do not lead to political victories. While bombs, missiles, and drones have an extraordinary capacity to maim and kill, assassinated leaders are easily replaced. Furthermore, death and injury to non-combatants, such as relatives attending wedding parties, supports the recruitment of military irregulars to groups like Al Quaida and the Islamic State. Meanwhile, in the United States, to swing the pendulum back from drone warfare to ground invasions and occupations, the Pentagon will demand more cannon fodder. The occupations on Afghanistan and Iraq cost the US military dearly in weaponry (much of grabbed by ISIS in Iraq), morale, and soldiers. This barrier must be overcome in order to have new boots on the ground.

The logical solution to this impasse is military conscription, but it would now come at tremendous political costs. As recently amended, the Selective Service System no longer offers deferments to students and women. It is difficult to imagine a successful ideological campaign to renew conscription among older teenagers and 20-something’s after a 44-year lapse. At present these young adults do not have the slightest motivation to involuntarily join US ground forces in the two most likely military theaters: Russia’s western flank and in Syria, either fighting Isis, the Assad regime, or fighting these two archenemies at the same time. While the Obama Administration’s Pivot to Asia has not yet led to major troop deployments or military conflicts with China, this would be the third military theater that the next administration would gear up for, regardless of who is elected.

But, as we have seen in many previous US wars, major pretexts for military escalation, such as Pearl Harbor, the Gulf of Tonkin, and 9-11, steadily appear. Could such incidents appear again, either by luck or by design, to justify the draft and renewed major wars? Absolutely. Could they again be used to institute heightened domestic political repression? Absolutely. 

Could such a regime prevail more than a few years? Not likely. 

This is why the prospects for fascism in the United States should be taken seriously, but why the prospects for counter-movements must also be taken seriously.

(Victor Rothman lives in Los Angeles. He can be reached at [email protected].)

-cw

PERSPECTIVE--Some popular media outlets have hyped the BREXIT as either the end of western civilization or the dawn of the golden age for the UK (United Kingdom).

But that’s how the media operates. The more sensational the spin, the greater the following.

What counts is how it all plays out in the long-run.

No one is disputing the turbulence in the short-run: what happens to trade agreements, ease of travel among the 28 member states, immigration policies. It is no different from a divorce. Life goes on, only differently, with some friendships extinguished and new ones formed. Some will always remain unchanged. And like a divorce, there will be alimony – but flowing in two directions, in various forms. It will be difficult to project who will pay more.

Even with the UK as a member, the European Union (EU) has an Achilles Heel owing to the sovereignty and nationalistic bent of its member nations, combined with a common monetary unit used by the nineteen members who comprise the Eurozone. The propping up of weaker economies in the union by the healthier ones, without the power to effectively influence legislation in the former, is like supporting your ne’re-do-well cousin Eddy.  

Unemployment is pervasive: 8.9% in the EU and 10.3% in the Eurozone.

Overall, the EU is not only an unhappy family, but a somewhat dysfunctional one.

So one cannot blame the UK for wanting to leave, especially since it has been on its own for over a thousand years.

The patriotic lyrics of “There Will Always be an England” come to mind. 

Well, there might only be England. Scotland and Northern Ireland voted heavily against BREXIT and could consider secession. The Jacobites might finally get their wish! Mel Gibson may apply blue paint to his face once more.

But they should be careful what they wish for. Just as the UK is taking a risk by bailing, Scotland and Northern Ireland would be well-advised to consider the health of the EU. In the next few years, other major players may part company with the EU. The remaining members, aside from Germany, will not be powerhouses. The EU could become a German-centric body. Maybe the Fourth Reich? A German hegemony is what some Europeans have suggested is developing, with or without the UK, certainly more likely without the UK and France.

Despite the urge by BREXIT’s most ardent supporters to break as quickly as possible, it will not be that easy. 52% support for the measure is not exactly a mandate. There will be a donnybrook in Parliament that will make our Congressional battles look like spats.

In the end, we need to respect the UK’s process.

Regardless, there will always be a Europe.

(Paul Hatfield is a CPA and serves as President of the Valley Village Homeowners Association. He blogs at Village to Village and contributes to CityWatch. The views presented are those of Mr. Hatfield and his alone and do not represent the opinions of Valley Village Homeowners Association or CityWatch. He can be reached at: [email protected].) Graphic credit: Cagle.com

-cw

ELECTION 2016--As we head toward the Democratic National Convention, I often hear the question, “What does Bernie want?” Wrong question. The right question is what the 12 million Americans who voted for a political revolution want.

And the answer is: They want real change in this country, they want it now and they are prepared to take on the political cowardice and powerful special interests which have prevented that change from happening.

"What do we want? We want to end the rapid movement that we are currently experiencing toward oligarchic control of our economic and political life."

They understand that the United States is the richest country in the history of the world, and that new technology and innovation make us wealthier every day. What they don’t understand is why the middle class c ontinues to decline, 47 million of us live in poverty and many Americans are forced to work two or three jobs just to cobble together the income they need to survive.

What do we want? We want an economy that is not based on uncontrollable greed, monopolistic practices and illegal behavior. We want an economy that protects the human needs and dignity of all people — children, the elderly, the sick, working people and the poor. We want an economic and political system that works for all of us, not one in which almost all new wealth and power rests with a handful of billionaire families.

The current campaign finance system is corrupt. Billionaires and powerful corporations are now, through super PACs, able to spend as much money as they want to buy elections and elect candidates who represent their interests, not the American people. Meanwhile, we have one of the lowest voter turnout rates of any major country on earth, and Republican governors are working overtime to suppress the vote and make it harder for poor people, people of color, seniors and young people to vote. 

What do we want? We want to overturn the disastrous Citizens United Supreme Court decision and move toward public funding of elections. We want universal voter registration, so that anyone 18 years of age or older who is eligible to vote is automatically registered. We want a vibrant democracy and a well-informed electorate that knows that its views can shape the future of the country.

Our criminal justice system is broken. We have 2.2 million people rotting behind bars at an annual expense of $80 billion. Youth unemployment in a number of inner-cities and rural communities is 30 to 50 percent, and millions of young people have limited opportunities to participate in the productive economy. Failing schools all around the country produce more people who end up in jail than graduate college. Millions of Americans have police records as a result of marijuana possession, which should be decriminalized. And too many people are serving unnecessarily long mandatory minimum sentences.

What do we want?  We want a criminal justice system that addresses the causes of incarceration, not one that simply imprisons more people. We want to demilitarize local police departments, see local police departments reflect the diversity of the communities they serve and end private ownership of prisons and detention centers. We want to create the conditions that allow people who are released from prison to stay out. We want the best educated population on earth, not the most incarcerated population.

The debate is over. Climate change is real. It is caused by human activity, and it already is causing devastating damage in our country and to the entire planet. If present trends continue, scientists tell us the planet will be 5 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit warmer by the end of the century — which means more droughts, floods, extreme weather disturbances, rising sea levels and acidification of the oceans. This is a planetary crisis of extraordinary magnitude.

What do we want? We want the United States to lead the world in pushing our energy system away from fossil fuel and toward energy efficiency and sustainable energy. We want a tax on carbon, the end of fracking and massive investment in wind, solar, geothermal and other sustainable technologies. We want to leave this planet in a way that is healthy and habitable for future generations.

What do we want? We want to end the rapid movement that we are currently experiencing toward oligarchic control of our economic and political life. As Lincoln put it at Gettysburg, we want a government of the people, by the people and for the people. That is what we want, and that is what we will continue fighting for.

(Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), currently a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2006 after serving 16 years in the House of Representatives. He is the longest serving independent member of Congress in American history. This piece was posted most recently at Common Dreams.) 

-cw

GUEST WORDS--Fourteen county workers in San Bernardino, nine parishioners in a Charleston, S.C., church, 12 military employees in Navy Yard, 20 children and six teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary School, and now 49 members of the LGBT community in Orlando, Fla. The attack last weekend in a gay nightclub has shocked the nation. It is the deadliest in a long and growing list of mass shootings that have become a disturbing trademark of the United States, setting us apart from every other developed nation in the worst way. (Photo above: Congresswoman Hahn with Congressman John Lewis.)

The American people are scared and angry — and they should be. After every attack, a number of my colleagues in Congress have stood in the way of enacting even the most obvious reforms to prevent the next one and protect human life.

There are effective and common-sense solutions that the American people want implemented. We need to reinstate the assault-weapons ban to get mass shooters’ weapon of choice out of our neighborhoods, and implement universal background checks to keep guns out of the hands of violent criminals and the dangerously mentally ill.

Would these reforms have saved lives in Orlando? I am not sure, but doing nothing is not the answer. The American people are demanding action, and we must try anything we can to prevent further attacks.

We have a long way to go toward ending gun violence, but we have to start somewhere with something I believe we can all agree on: keeping guns out of the hands of terrorists. Since Sept. 11, 2001, we have gone to great lengths to stop terrorist attacks. Travelers must go through a full-body scanner before boarding a plane. Passengers cannot even bring a bottle of shampoo in their carry-on luggage. Federal authorities compile lists of suspected terrorists, and none of those individuals are allowed on a plane.

And yet, the suspected terrorists who have been deemed too dangerous to fly have nothing standing in the way of them buying an AR-15 at their nearest superstore and committing the same atrocity that we saw most recently in Orlando.

Gun violence has terrorized communities in this country for years, but it is time to also address it as a threat to our national security. Our lax gun laws are not a secret. Terrorist leaders know that the military style assault weapons readily available at stores can do as much — if not more — damage than bombs. ISIS and Al Qaeda recruiters know this is our weakness and have been urging lone-wolf attackers to take advantage of it for years.

Yet, many of my colleagues in Congress who have claimed to be tough on terrorism have stood in the way of efforts to close the terror loophole. My message to them: You are not tough enough.

Last year, Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and former Homeland Security Committee Chairman Peter King, R-N.Y., introduced legislation that would ban individuals on the no-fly list from buying firearms and explosives and empower federal authorities to stop individuals they suspect of having terrorist ties from purchasing guns that may be used for terrorist activities.

The American people are resoundingly behind this proposal. Members of Congress doing the bidding of the gun lobby are the only people standing in the way of its passage. After a 15-hour filibuster by my Senate colleagues, Senate Republicans have agreed to consider holding a vote on gun reform. This is an encouraging step.

I implore you to call your representative and your senators. Urge them to support “No Fly, No Buy.” This is common-sense legislation that can save lives.

(Janice Hahn, D-San Pedro, represents California’s 44th District in the U.S. Congress. This perspective appeared earlier at Congresswoman Hahn’s website and at presstelegram.com.)

-cw 

STANDING FOR SOMETHING--It was almost midnight when I found myself glued to the live video of scores of Democratic congressmembers then about twelve hours into their historic sit-in. They were occupying the House chamber, jerry-rigging a social media-based broadcast when the Republican leadership shut-down the C-Span cameras, rising one after another to speak with passion, reminding the nation that business as usual is no longer okay. They are proud of themselves and each other, as they should be. They are grateful to civil rights icon and Georgia Congressman John Lewis who has been leading them in speaking truth to power.   By late morning Thursday they were continuing to occupy the House.  Despite the Republican leadership announcing that the House is not in session, they are insisting that there be no congressional recess without voting on the proposed bills, and they are demanding that the public, filling the galleries, be allowed to stay.

They are reminding the world that since 1968 more Americans have been killed in gun violence than in all the wars in US history. They are demanding a vote on gun safety laws. It’s a moving, empowering thing to see.  It’s rare, powerful, and should be applauded.

"It’s a moving, empowering thing to see... And yet. There’s a huge problem."

And yet. There’s a huge problem. The two proposals the Democrats are demanding a vote on are very problematic.  One bill proposes only a small, completely insufficient expansion of background checks.  The second would not only be ineffective in preventing gun violence, but would cause a dangerous increase in racial profiling and Islamophobia.  That second bill is the basis for the slogan “no fly, no buy” – which refers to making sure that no one on law enforcement’s so-called “no-fly” lists is ever allowed to buy a weapon. 

If we were talking about actually preventing real terrorists from buying weapons, that would be a no-brainer.  But the “no-fly” lists are not lists of terrorists; they are lists of people –  American citizens, green-card holders, visitors, citizens of other countries – who end up on the FBI’s or other law enforcement agencies’ lists for reasons we and they never know. Maybe they share a name with someone once suspected of knowing someone whose second cousin once skyped with someone thought to be a would-be terrorist. Maybe their college roommate ended up trying to go to Syria. For some few of them, maybe they really do have dangerous intentions. But there are thousands of people on these lists. Most of them can’t even find out why they’re not allowed to fly, let alone succeed at challenging the prohibition.  We should not forget that President Nelson Mandela remained on the US “terrorist” watch-list until 2008. What the American Civil Liberties Union calls our “error-prone and unfair watch-listing system” doesn’t produce a list of terrorists at all. 

If it was up to me, I’d prohibit anyone – anyone, on or off those lists – from buying or possessing these lethal weapons.  But it’s not up to me.  And unfortunately the “no fly, no buy” rule being proposed in the newly militant House tonight is not going to prevent gun violence either.  What it is going to do, unfortunately, is further legitimize these watch lists, now as the basis for a politically more popular version of gun control.  But as the ACLU noted, “Our nation’s watch-listing system is error-prone and unreliable because it uses vague and overbroad criteria and secret evidence to place individuals on blacklists without a meaningful process to correct government error and clear their names.” 

And we know that those “vague and overbroad criteria” end up being applied disproportionately to Muslims, Arabs, South Asians and others wrongly assumed to be linked to terrorism.  It is terribly sad that some of our most principled, consistent members of Congress – members of the Black Caucus, the conscience of the Congress, and the Progressive Caucus, whose members work against racism, against racial profiling, against Islamophobia and hatred, against war and beyond – are among those accepting and urging even greater reliance on this “error-prone and unreliable” system in the name of preventing gun violence.

The Democratic leadership is refusing to allow their now-insurgent party to officially endorse the most sensible (however insufficient) versions of gun control laws:  outlawing assault weapons, removing the prohibition on federal research on the public health consequences of gun violence, and universal background checks.  Those things, lethally opposed by the NRA, would not stop the epidemic of gun violence in this country but unlike the no-fly lists they would certainly help.  Some in the sit-in rejected those restrictions. At 12:35 in the morning, Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke, one of those who had set up the live-streaming of the debate after the Republican leadership turned off the cameras, rose to call for all three of those goals.

The congressional sit-in is bringing moral power and renewed urgency to the cause of gun control. Watching the Democrats shout down Republican leaders desperately trying to reclaim control of the House might challenge the partisan bickering that has paralyzed Congress for years. It may mark the beginning of a turn towards the re-legitimation of Congress, long demonized as the least effective, least useful, least popular institution around. That renewed legitimacy, though, would be far more likely achieved if these members of Congress, as they consolidate their new moral credibility, would finally reject the current iteration of “no fly” lists as the basis for gun control – or indeed, as a valid method of counter-terrorism.

The Congressional sit-in protesters should be congratulated for standing up for their principles. And they should be pressured to make sure their plans to act on those principles don’t undermine other principles of civil rights and equality.

(Phyllis Bennis directs the New Internationalism Project at the Institute for Policy Studies.  Her most recent book is Understanding ISIS and the New Global War on Terror.  This perspective was posted first at Common Dreams) 

-cw