Hello All - After a 30-day ceasefire, and then a pause of several weeks, on Tuesday Israel resumed its war on Gaza. On that day more than 400 Palestinians were killed and almost 700 were injured. The attacks were coordinated, spanning all of Gaza, as you can see from this map. As of Saturday night, more than 600 had been killed. The bombing is now becoming an invasion and a re-occupation of Gaza. Christopher Hedges (below) calls this the “Last Chapter of the Genocide.” Is he right?
Many commentators, in Israel and elsewhere, believe that Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu never intended to move to “Phase 2,” and always planned to resume the war once the first round of hostages had been released. The families of the remaining hostages, and tens of thousands of others in Israel, are furious are furious about Netanyahu’s decision to restart the war. Israel has now called up its National Guard to deal with antiwar protesters. Protesters in Israel are saying that their Prime Minister has restarted the war because that is the only way that his government can remain united, and the only way that Netanyahu can remain in power and out of prison.
But this issue goes deeper. It is clear from statements by Netanyahu and leading figures in leading figures in his government that Israel plans to implement its long-held plan to remove all Palestinians from Gaza and to reclaim the land and incorporate it into Israel. The Zionist movement has always worked to establish a state without Palestinians, and now the movement is in power and with Trump in office sees its opportunity. How this will be accomplished remains to be seen, and it will be stubbornly opposed by the people of Gaza. But this is the war that we now have, and this is the program of ethnic cleansing and genocide that our government now supports. Will the Samaritans of this world rush to Gaza’s aid, or will they pass by on the other side?
SOME ESSAYS ILLUMINATING ISRAEL’S RESUMPTION OF THE WAR
The Last Chapter of the Genocide
By Chris Hedges [March 22, 2025]
---- This is the last chapter of the genocide. It is the final, blood-soaked push to drive the Palestinians from Gaza. No food. No medicine. No shelter. No clean water. No electricity. Israel is swiftly turning Gaza into a Dantesque cauldron of human misery where Palestinians are being killed in their hundreds and soon, again, in their thousands and tens of thousands, or they will be forced out never to return. The final chapter marks the end of Israeli lies. The lie of the two-state solution. The lie that Israel respects the laws of war that protect civilians. The lie that Israel bombs hospitals and schools only because they are used as staging areas by Hamas. The lie that Hamas uses civilians as human shields, while Israel routinely forces captive Palestinians to enter potentially bobby trapped tunnels and buildings ahead of Israeli troops. The lie that Hamas or Palestine Islamic Jihad (PIJ) are responsible — the charge often being errant Palestinian rockets — for the destruction of hospitals, United Nations’ buildings or mass Palestinian casualties. The lie that humanitarian aid to Gaza is blocked because Hamas is hijacking the trucks or smuggling in weapons and war material. The lie that Israeli babies are beheaded or Palestinians carried out mass rape of Israeli women. The lie that 75 percent of the tens of thousands killed in Gaza were Hamas “terrorists.” The lie that Hamas, because it was allegedly rearming and recruiting new fighters, is responsible for the breakdown of the ceasefire agreement. Israel’s naked genocidal visage is exposed. [Read More]
Israel’s return to war is a prelude to mass expulsion
By Ben Reiff, +972 Magazine [Israel/Palestine] [March 18, 2025]
---- With Trump’s green light for ethnic cleansing, Israel’s renewed attack on Gaza threatens to become an all-out effort to empty the enclave of Palestinians…. Two months after agreeing to a ceasefire deal that should have ended the war, Israel has resumed its bombardment of the Gaza Strip with an intensity that recalls the earliest days of the onslaught. Israeli airstrikes have killed over 400 Palestinians and wounded hundreds more since the early hours of this morning, and the army has ordered thousands of residents of the towns and neighborhoods spanning the perimeter of the Strip to flee their homes. … We know what comes next: more airstrikes and evacuation orders and likely another ground invasion which, if we are to take Israeli ministers at their word, promises to be more extensive and lethal than the last. “Israel will, from now on, act against Hamas with increasing military strength,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said in a statement earlier today. … But to what end? Israel is spinning a narrative that it had no choice but to resume the offensive due to “Hamas’ repeated refusal to release our hostages, as well as its rejection of all the proposals it has received from U.S. Presidential Envoy Steve Witkoff and from the mediators.” Yet this is a total distortion of reality, and the families of Israeli hostages who remain captive in Gaza know it. [Read More]
Israel's Media Still Has the Audacity to Conceal Gaza's Horrors, but Showing It Won't Stop the War
By Gideon Levy, Haaretz [Israel] [March 20, 2025]
---- To the list of crimes, one must now add – more than ever – those of the Israeli media. Israel is knowingly and maliciously violating a signed international agreement and launching an unrestrained, savage attack on the Gaza Strip. In its opening move, Israel killed more than 400 Palestinians, including 174 children. Israel acknowledges that this time, the targets aren't terrorists but civilians – an explicit war crime. It is killing for the sake of killing, with the goal of reigniting the war and preserving Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's coalition, long after the quota of revenge and punishment for the October 7, 2023, attack was met. None of this will be covered by the Israeli media: mutilated bodies loaded onto donkey-drawn carts, pickup trucks and private cars, or carried by bare hands; teenagers digging through rubble with hammers and bare hands, without any heavy equipment, trying desperately to rescue survivors and recover remains of the dead; wounded people lying bleeding on the filthy floors of what were once hospitals; children in tattered rags searching for their parents; parents in tattered rags carrying the bodies of their children. … None of this has appeared in the bulk of Israeli media coverage over the past two days. Only the hostages and the dangers they face in Gaza. The concern for them is understandable and justified, but more than two million other people are living in Gaza. What about them? Are their lives expendable simply because they aren't Israeli? Are they all terrorists, even the unborn children of pregnant women fleeing for their lives? Shouldn't their suffering be reported? Shouldn't their fate be known? [Read More]
FREE MAHMOUD KHALIL
I am a Palestinian political prisoner in the US. I am being targeted for my activism
By Mahmoud Khalil, The Guardian [UK] [March 19, 2025]
---- On March 8, I was taken by DHS [the Department of Homeland Security] agents who refused to provide a warrant, and accosted my wife and me as we returned from dinner. By now, the footage of that night has been made public. Before I knew what was happening, agents handcuffed and forced me into an unmarked car. At that moment, my only concern was for Noor’s safety. I had no idea if she would be taken too, since the agents had threatened to arrest her for not leaving my side. DHS would not tell me anything for hours – I did not know the cause of my arrest or if I was facing immediate deportation. At 26 Federal Plaza, I slept on the cold floor. In the early morning hours, agents transported me to another facility in Elizabeth, New Jersey. There, I slept on the ground and was refused a blanket despite my request. … My arrest was a direct consequence of exercising my right to free speech as I advocated for a free Palestine and an end to the genocide in Gaza, which resumed in full force Monday night. [Read More]
(Video) From Peter Beinart - Nadia Abu El-Haj: “Mahmoud is Not Safe”
[March 23, 2025]
---- Today, we continue our discussion of the assault on academic freedom, especially for pro-Palestinian activists, with Columbia University’s Nadia Abu El-Haj. She is Ann Whitney Olin Professor in the Departments of Anthropology at Barnard College and Columbia University and Co-Director of the Center for Palestine Studies. She just published an essay in The New York Review of Books entitled, “Mahmoud is Not Safe,” about the detention of Columbia student Mahmoud Khalil.
“First, They Came for Mahmoud Khalil”
By Meghnad Bose, Drop Site News [March 23, 2025]
---- Suddenly thrust into the media limelight—surrounded by recrimination and praise—Mahmoud Khalil has become a symbol of the urgent threat to the First Amendment and free speech in the United States. Still, little has been reported about the life of Mahmoud Khalil, about who he was before the Trump administration treated him as a public enemy and scapegoat amid the crackdown on pro-Palestine advocacy. Drop Site News spoke to a dozen individuals close to the 30-year-old—including his friends, fellow protesters, classmates, former colleagues, and faculty—to paint a fuller picture of him and the scenes on Columbia’s campus. Khalil’s wife, Noor Abdalla, has also provided photographs of their life together. The following report traces his journey from an 18-year-old refugee in Lebanon, teaching himself English through YouTube tutorials, to being a lead negotiator at the heart of a historic Columbia encampment that sparked a student-led protest movement, encouraging encampments across the world in solidarity with Gaza. The interviews reveal previously unreported details of the hours leading up to his arrest, the regard with which his Jewish friends describe his solidarity against antisemitism, and how he contributed to the student community at Columbia University. Despite facing discrimination due to anti-Palestinian racism in his institution, Khalil's story, as reported below, depicts a young man with a steadfast commitment to solidarity with people from all walks of life. [Read More]
ALSO OF INTEREST - “The Dark, McCarthyist History of Deporting Activists,” by Michelle Chen, The Progressive [March 21, 2025] [Link]; and “Abducting Bodies, Silencing Dissent: Mahmoud Khalil and the Rise of State Terror,” by Henry Giroux, Counterpunch [March 21, 2025] [Link].
THINGS TO DO
On Tuesday, March 25th, at 8 PM, the Vietnam Peace Commemoration Committee will present a Zoom program discussing “The Impact of the Antiwar Movement.” Did the Vietnam antiwar movement make a difference? What kind of impact can ANY antiwar movement make on the war makers? Several outstanding historians of and participants in the movement will share their knowledge and memories. To sign up and/or to learn more, go here.
On Sunday, March 30, the documentary film “The Interview” will be screened at the Community Unitarian Universalist Congregation, 468 Rosedale Ave, in White Plains, starting at 11:30 AM. The "Interview" asks viewers to confront their feelings about justice and redemption, while exposing the unfair practices of the New York State Parole Board. After the film there will be a panel discussion with formerly incarcerated individuals and family members of those incarcerated. To attend and/or to learn more, go here.
CFOW NUTS & BOLTS
Please consider getting involved with Concerned Families of Westchester. Weather permitting we meet for a protest/rally each Saturday in Hastings, at 12 noon at the VFW Plaza (Warburton and Spring St.) Our newsletter is archived at https://cfow.blogspot.com, and news of interest and coming events is posted on our CFOW Facebook page. Another Facebook page focuses on the climate crisis. If you would like to join one of our Zoom meetings, each Tuesday and Thursday at noon, please send a return email for the link. If you would like to support our work by making a CONTRIBUTION, please make out your check to “Frank Brodhead,” write “CFOW” on the memo line, and send your check to CFOW, PO Box 364, Hastings-on-Hudson, NY 10706. Thanks!
REWARDS!
This weeks Rewards for stalwart readers are samples of the work of jazz and blues singer Nina Simone. She is remembered today primarily for her haunting music, much of it reflecting the travails of the US civil-rights era. But her personal story is illuminates what it was like to be “young, gifted, and Black” as an artist in the dying (we hope) days of segregation and in the midst of the Black freedom struggles. I remember her autobiography, I Put a Spell on You (with Stephen Cleary) as extraordinary. But, finally, for some music, here are some of her classics: "I Wish I Knew How It Feels to Be Free"; "My Baby Just Cares for Mo"; and "Mississippi Goddamn." There is lots more of her great stuff on-line. Enjoy!
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
CFOW WEEKLY READER
FEATURED ARTICLES
Resistance is alive and well in the United States
By Erica Chenoweth, et al., Waging Nonviolence [March 19, 2025]
---- Many underestimate resistance to the current Republican administration because they view resistance through a narrow lens. The 2017 Women’s March in particular — immediate in its response, massive in its scope and size — may inform collective imaginations about what the beginning of a resistance movement should look like during Trump 2.0. In fact, our research shows that street protests today are far more numerous and frequent than skeptics might suggest. Although it is true that the reconfigured Peoples’ March of 2025 — held on Jan. 18 — saw lower turnout than the 2017 Women’s March, that date also saw the most protests in a single day for over a year. And since Jan. 22, we’ve seen more than twice as many street protests than took place during the same period eight years ago. … Historically, street protest and legal challenges are common avenues for popular opposition to governments, but economic noncooperation — such as strikes, boycotts and buycotts — is what often gets the goods. Individual participation is deliberately obscure, and targeted companies may have little interest in releasing internal data. Only the aggregate impacts are measurable — and in the case of Tesla, Target and other companies, the impacts so far have been measurable indeed. [Read More]
Israel’s “Culture of Cruelty” Inspires the Far Right Worldwide
An interview with Pankaj Mishra, The Intercept [March 22, 2025]
[FB – Pankaj Mishra is the author of a new book, “The World After Gaza” (highly recommended.)]
---- After breaking a two-month ceasefire, Israel launched an assault on Gaza on Tuesday, killing more than 400 people in pre-dawn strikes. The death toll continues to climb as airstrikes persist, and Israel pushes forward with a ground invasion. At least 200 children have been killed in recent attacks, according to UNICEF. The assault — the deadliest in over a year — came after Donald Trump gave Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the green light to break the ceasefire. Netanyahu has warned, “This is only the beginning.” Author Pankaj Mishra argues Israel operates within a “culture of impunity,” emboldened by global far-right movements that admire Israel’s “brazen cruelty.” … “Some of the worst people in the world today are drawn to Israel,” Mishra says. “Not because they believe in Zionism, not because they are protective of Jewish population of Israel, but because Israel again represents to them — embodies this opportunity to take whatever you can and hold on to it using extreme violence if necessary.” [Read More]
America Needs a New Free Speech Movement
By Zephyr Teachout, The Nation [March 19, 2025]
---- We are in a full-blown crisis of free speech. Earlier this month, ICE agents detained Mahmoud Khalil, a green-card holder, with plans to deport him because of the content of his speech. Trump banned AP reporters from press briefings after the AP refused to use the phrase “Gulf of America” instead of “Gulf of Mexico” in its style guide. And the administration is following through on threats to withdraw funding from universities that allowed disfavored speech. While Trump will lose in court on many of his efforts, many corporate, university, and nonprofit leaders are quietly obeying in advance, avoiding conflict. In the 1960s, the Free Speech Movement was a rallying cry for students and activists who understood that the right to dissent, argue, and speak freely was essential to democracy. Today, we need a new Free Speech Movement—and not just a retread of the 1960s. A new free speech movement would recognize that both the direct authoritarian power-grabs of the Trump administration, and the power grabs of private monopolist entities represent a significant danger. Trump’s oligarchs—his big tech allies who control the flow of news and information—are themselves an independent threat to open society. [Read More]
ALSO OF INTEREST - “The European Union is preparing for war,” from The Progressive International [March 18, 2025] [Link]; “’When the banality of evil becomes normalized, it grows unchecked:’ A conversation with UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese,” by Rafael Sergi, The Left Berlin [March 15, 2025] [Link]; and “The Hidden Motive Behind Trump’s Attack on Trans People, by M. Gessen, The New York Times [March 17, 2025] [Link]
CIVIL LIBERTIES
(Video) “We Live in a Fascist Dictatorship”: Elie Mystal on Trump’s Lawlessness, Attacks on the Judiciary
From Democracy Now! [March 19, 2025]
---- Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts issued a rare statement Tuesday criticizing attacks by President Trump and his allies on federal judges. “For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision,” he said. Roberts’s statement came after Trump called for the impeachment of U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, who ordered the Trump administration to stop using the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to deport immigrants. On Saturday, the administration ignored Boasberg’s order to turn around three deportation flights bound for El Salvador. We speak with The Nation's justice correspondent Elie Mystal on the Trump-led breakdown of constitutional order. “There's not a coming constitutional crisis,” says Mystal. “We are in a constitutional crisis right now.” [See the Program]
(Video) Criminalizing Dissent: Greenpeace Ordered to Pay $667M to Dakota Access Pipeline Firm over Protests
From Democracy Now! [March 20, 2025]
---- A jury in North Dakota has ordered Greenpeace to pay more than $660 million in damages for defaming Energy Transfer Partners, the corporation behind the Dakota Access Pipeline. The Texas-based pipeline company accused Greenpeace of orchestrating criminal behavior by training and providing funds to the Indigenous-led protests at Standing Rock. Greenpeace and its supporters, including other nonprofits and advocacy groups, argued that the lawsuit is part of a conspicuous attempt by corporations to destroy the right to free speech. Longtime human rights and environmental lawyer Steven Donziger, who was part of the independent trial monitoring team observing the trial, says it was purposely held in a region of the country with deep ties to the fossil fuel industry. Donziger said most of the jurors in the case were connected to the industry and were “predisposed” to rule in favor of Energy Transfer despite the “false narratives” presented at the trial. Greenpeace plans to appeal the ruling. [See the Program]
THE WEST BANK
Four reasons why Israel’s ethnic cleansing of the West Bank is being accepted by the world
By Qassam Muaddi, Mondoweiss [March 21, 2025]
---- Only three months ago, as Israel was negotiating the last details of the ceasefire deal in Gaza, nobody anticipated that soon 40,000 Palestinians would be displaced from their homes with no return in sight. Even more unexpected was Israel’s continued widening of its campaign to new parts of the West Bank, with threats of engulfing the entire territory. But what was the least expected of all was that it would happen with little or no reaction — locally, regionally, and internationally. When U.S. President Donald Trump said that the U.S. planned to “own” Gaza, expel its population, and build a Middle East “Riviera” on top of their destroyed homes, the uproar was unanimous. The Arab states to which Trump suggested Gazans would be shipped off, unequivocally opposed the plan. European states, including Germany, who, throughout the 15 months of genocide, backed Israel’s actions every step of the way, rejected Trump’s proposal outright. Yet, when Israel began to do the exact same thing in the West Bank, the reaction was and continues to be terrifyingly modest. The effect is that Israeli violence against Palestinians in the West Bank has become normalized to the point that it is now accepted as commonplace. But the normalization of an ethnic cleansing operation taken out of an eighteenth-century playbook is perfectly explicable — and for the following reasons: … [Read More]
Israeli settler violence is rapidly emptying Jordan Valley of Palestinians
By Dikla Taylor-Sheinman and Georgia Gee, +972 Magazine [Israel/Palestine] [March 19, 2025]
---- On the first day of Ramadan, Yasser Abu Aram sat and stared despondently at his plot of land in Khirbet Samra in the occupied West Bank. Months of relentless harassment by young Israeli settlers — who stole his livestock and encircled the small shepherding community day and night — had taken their toll. “Everything that is happening here is also happening in the surrounding communities,” Abu Aram told +972 Magazine. “Today it’s me. Tomorrow it’s someone else.” Abu Aram is one of the approximately 60,000 Palestinians living in the Jordan Valley, which runs along the eastern flank of the West Bank and makes up nearly 30 percent of the territory. The residents of Khirbet Samra are descendants of Bedouin tribes displaced from the Naqab/Negev desert in 1948; Abu Aram’s family was uprooted twice over in the West Bank before settling in Khirbet Samra in 2005. Now, following a surge in settler attacks, as well as the establishment in February of a new outpost on the hill overlooking the community, Abu Aram has decided to leave the place he has called home for the past two decades. [Read More]
WAR ON YEMEN?
Trump’s Air War on Yemen Escalates as Civilian Population Suffers Food Insecurity, Cholera Epidemic
By Juan Cole, Informed Comment [March 18, 2025]
---- The Trump administration began bombing Yemen last weekend, when the US Air Force launched 47 air raids on at least seven provinces, killing some 53 persons. On Monday the air raids continued, hitting not only the capital, Sanaa, but also Saadeh in the north, the hometown of the movement of Ansar Allah (Helpers of God) or Houthis. The bombing comes in response to the decision of leader Abdelmalik al-Houthi to react to Israel’s blockade of food and aid on Gaza, where a million minors are in danger of malnutrition, by again targeting Red Sea shipping and Israel itself. … In order to support the total war on Gaza of the Israeli government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and in order to pursue his monstrous plan to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians of Gaza, Trump is drawn into making war on yet another Middle Eastern country. Such a war is dangerous. What if the Houthis managed to kill US seamen on the naval vessels in the Red Sea that are supporting the bombing campaign? Wouldn’t he have to send in troops? Does he realize how costly in blood and treasure a Yemen ground war would be? [Read More]
THE CLIMATE CRISIS
Earth’s 10 Hottest Years Have Been the Last 10
By Delger Erdenesanaa, New York Times [March 18, 2025]
---- 2024 was the single warmest year on record, surpassing even 2023’s wide lead over other recent years. The planet’s surface was approximately 1.55 degrees Celsius warmer than its average during a reference period that approximates the preindustrial era, from 1850-1900. The annual report from the [World Meteorological Organization], a United Nations agency, includes input from dozens of experts and institutions from around the world and sheds further light on the record-breaking heat of 2024 and places it in the context of Earth’s long-term warming from climate change. The extra energy in the atmosphere and the oceans helped fuel climate-related disasters around the globe. Extreme weather events like drought, storms and wildfires displaced hundreds of thousands of people from their homes, the report says. [Read More]
THE STATE OF THE UNION
Can Zohran Mamdani, a Socialist and TikTok Savant, Become N.Y.C. Mayor?
By Jeffery C. Mays and Maya King, New York Times [March 23, 2025]
---- In the crowded race for mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani has become a magnet for attention, ascending in the polls and raising money through a mix of social media savvy and a plain-spoken, everyman approach. … While many of his progressive rivals in the race have adopted more centrist positions on certain issues like policing and public safety, Mr. Mamdani, a democratic socialist, continues to embrace left-leaning views that have become less popular with voters in New York. It has nonetheless proved to be an effective campaign strategy. Mr. Mamdani has become the standard-bearer for progressive Democrats as a fresh-faced alternative to his more veteran rivals, most notably former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, Mayor Eric Adams and Brad Lander, the city comptroller. But winning an election on a hyper-progressive platform will be a challenge. Mr. Mamdani acknowledges this and knows he must get his supporters — many on the far left and outside the city’s traditional power structure — to turn out in droves. [Read More]
The Entire Future of American Public Health Is at Risk
By David Wallace-Wells, New York Times [March 19, 2025]
---- Arguments about natural versus vaccine immunity helped give shape to debate about whether the public-health establishment was overly cautious about Covid, too. As we exit what Siddhartha Mukherjee recently called America’s “privatized pandemic,” the country is feeling its way toward a new anti-establishment equilibrium — and anointing a new class of health leaders distinguished by their vocal skepticism and distrust. … In substituting individual behavior, diet and the your-body-is-a-temple model of human flourishing for germ theory, aerosol spread and what are often called the social determinants of health, the country’s new health leadership team is committing that cardinal American error: seeing individuals as perfectly autonomous and inviolable units, and defining everything outside individual control as either an irrelevant consideration or a violation of bodily autonomy. [Read More]
(Video) Sabotaging Social Security: Trump & Musk Move Ahead with Plan to Cut Agency Staff & Critical Services
From Democracy Now! [March 19, 2025]
---- The Social Security Administration is considering drastic new anti-fraud measures that could disrupt benefit payments to millions of Americans, according to an internal memo first obtained by the political newsletter Popular Information. The changes would force millions of customers to file claims in person at a field office rather than over the phone. An estimated 75,000 to 85,000 elderly and disabled adults per week would be diverted to field offices. This comes even as the Trump administration slashes jobs and closes offices at the agency. Officials in the Social Security Administration who spoke with reporter Judd Legum, founder of Popular Information, have told him that there is an “effort to break the organization.” [See the Program]
OUR HISTORY
Peaceable Revolutions
By Brenda Wineapple, New York Review of Books [April 10, 2025 issue]
---- In her history of American social movements, Linda Gordon argues that they are vital and transformative partnerships that, by challenging the status quo, are indispensable to the health of the nation. … “A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority,” Henry David Thoreau observed in Civil Disobedience, his protest against being taxed for a war he decidedly opposed, “but it is irresistible when it clogs by its whole weight.” This is what he called a “peaceable revolution” or, perhaps, a social movement—and maybe even an “intersectional” one. But he then added, in his typically acerbic style, “if any such is possible.” To Gordon, though, peaceable revolutions are not just possible; they are irresistible, they are powerful, they are born in hope and idealism, and they are maintained with courage and hard work, her discussions of the Klan and 1930s fascism notwithstanding. Warning that “we should not imagine that the United States is immune,” she reminds her readers—who, self-selecting, will need no reminding—that “racism, nationalism, violence and authoritarian leadership” retain some of their appeal. That, to me, in 2025, is quite an understatement. Yet she steadfastly retains her optimism about social movements. [Read More]
Learning From the Courage of the Civil Rights Movement
By Jeanne Theoharis, Jacobin Magazine [March 2025]
---- Many on the Left are wondering what to do against the Trump administration’s vicious assaults on workers, immigrants, and free speech. We can look to the example of US civil rights activists, who kept taking great risks even after demoralizing setbacks. “It was very difficult to keep going when all our efforts seemed in vain,” Rosa Parks described her work in the 1940s and early ’50s. Getting her political start with the Scottsboro Boys case in the early 1930s, Rosa Parks was part of a small band of activists in the 1940s that sought to transform Montgomery’s NAACP into a more activist chapter. Over and over, they tried to find justice — and over and over, there was no justice. … This was dangerous and demoralizing work — there was “almost no way,” according to Parks, to see any progress. Amid that fearsome climate, NAACP comrade Johnnie Carr noted, many people “lost faith in themselves.” But their small crew kept at it, because, as Parks explained, “someone had to do something.” They couldn’t turn away. But she hated how “a militant Negro was almost a freak of nature to [white people], many times ridiculed by others of his own group.” We are in a frightening moment in this country, as the Trump administration pledges mass deportations, slashes essential government workers, and now appears to be launching an authoritarian crackdown on free speech and civil liberties. Many people have been asking me, as a historian of the civil rights movement: How do we resist this onslaught of racism, rights abridgment, and mass firings? What can we do? What measures will actually be effective? [Read More]
