Mother of the Sit-Down Strike
From the Archive: During the late-Nineteenth-Century struggles against America’s
Robber Barons and the Ku Klux Klan, Lucy Gonzales Parsons was a brave fighter
for human rights. In recognition of International Women’s Day, we are re-posting
William Loren Katz’s account of her remarkable life.
By William Loren Katz (Originally published on March 6, 2012)
On March 7, 1942, fire engulfed the simple home of 89-year-old Lucy Gonzales
Parsons on Chicago’s North Troy Street, and ended a life dedicated to liberating
working women and men of the world from capitalism and racial oppression.
A dynamic, militant, self-educated public speaker and writer, she became the
first American woman of color to carry her crusade for socialism across the
country and overseas. In 1905, she was credited with the idea of striking
workers sitting down at their work place rather than going outside, a concept
that has resonated through time with the lunch counter sit-ins for civil rights
and today’s Occupy movement.
Lucy Gonzales started life in Texas. She was of Mexican-American, AfricanAmerican, and Native-American descent and born into slavery. The path she chose
after emancipation led to conflict with the Ku Klux Klan, hard work, painful
personal losses, and many nights in jail.
In Albert Parsons, a white man who’s Waco Spectator fought the Klan and demanded
social and political equality for African-Americans, she found a handsome,
committed soul mate. The white supremacy forces in Texas considered the couple
dangerous and their marriage illegal, and soon drove them from the state.
Lucy and Albert reached Chicago, where they began a family and threw themselves
into two new militant movements, one to build strong industrial unions and the
other to agitate for socialism. Lucy concentrated on organizing working women
and Albert became a famous radical organizer and speaker, one of the few
important union leaders in Chicago who was not an immigrant.
In 1886, the couple and their two children stepped onto Michigan Avenue to lead
80,000 working people in the world’s first May Day parade and a demand for the
eight-hour day. A new international holiday was born as more than 100,000 also
marched in other U.S. cities.
By then, Chicago’s wealthy industrial and banking elite had targeted Albert and
other radical figures for elimination, to decapitate the growing union movement.
A protest rally called by Albert a few days after May Day became known as the
Haymarket Riot when seven Chicago policemen died in a bomb blast. No evidence
has ever been found pointing to those who made or detonated the bomb, but
Parsons and seven immigrant union leaders were arrested.
As the corporate media whipped up patriotic and law-and-order fervor, a rigged
legal system rushed the eight to convictions and death sentences. When Lucy led
the campaign to win a new trial, one Chicago official called her “more dangerous
than a thousand rioters.” When Albert and three other comrades were executed,
and four others were sentenced to prison, the movement for industrial unions and
the eight-hour day was beheaded.
Lucy, far from discouraged, accelerated her actions. Though she had lost Albert,
and two years later lost her young daughter to illness, Lucy continued her
crusade against capitalism and war, and to exonerate “the Haymarket Martyrs.”
She led poor women into rich neighborhoods “to confront the rich on their
doorsteps,” challenged politicians at public meetings, marched on picket lines,
and continued to address and write political tracts for workers’ groups far
beyond Chicago.
Though Lucy had justified direct action against those who used violence against
workers, in 1905 she suggested a very different strategy. She was one of only
two women delegates (the other was Mother Jones) among the 200 men at the
founding convention of the militant Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and
the only woman to speak.
First she advocated a measure close to her heart when she called women “the
slaves of slaves” and urged IWW delegates to fight for equality and assess
underpaid women lower union fees. In a longer speech, she called for the use of
nonviolence that would have broad meaning for the world’s protest movements.
She told delegates that workers shouldn’t “strike and go out and starve, but to
strike and remain in and take possession of the necessary property of
production.”
A year later Mahatma Gandhi, speaking to fellow Indians at the Johannesburg
Empire Theater, advocated nonviolence to fight colonialism, but he was still 25
years away from leading fellow Indians in nonviolent marches against India’s
British rulers.
Eventually Lucy Parsons’s principle traveled to the U.S. sit-down strikers of
the 1930s, Dr. King and the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s, the
antiwar movements that followed, and finally to today’s Arab Spring and the
Occupy movements.
Lucy was an unrelenting agitator, leading picket lines and speaking to workers’
audiences in the United States, and then before trade union meetings in England.
In February 1941, poor and living on a pension for the blind, the Farm Equipment
Workers Union asked Lucy Parsons to give an inspirational speech to its workers,
and a few months later she rode as the guest of honor on its May Day parade
float.
After the fire that took her life, federal and local lawmen arrived at the
gutted Parsons home to make sure her legacy died with her. They poked through
the wreckage, confiscated her vast library and personal writings, and never
returned them.
Lucy Parsons’s determined effort to elevate and inspire the oppressed to take
command remained alive among those who knew, heard, and loved her. But few today
are aware of her insights, courage and tenacity. Despite her fertile mind,
writing and oratorical skills, and striking beauty, Lucy Parsons has not found a
place in school texts, social studies curricula, or Hollywood movies.
Yet she has earned a prominent place in the long fight for a better life for
working people, for women, for people of color, for her country, and for her
world.
William Loren Katz adapted this essay from his updated and expanded edition of
Black Indians: A Hidden Heritage [Atheneum, 2012]. Website: williamlkatz.com.
This essay also appears at the Zinn Education Project:
http://zinnedproject.org/posts/16855
Nuke Sludge Leaking at Hanford
The U.S. rush to build a giant arsenal of nuclear weapons during the Cold War
created an environmental disaster at Hanford in Washington State along the
Columbia River. Clean-up costs are staggering and radioactive sludge threatens
to contaminate the region’s water supply, writes nuclear watchdog John LaForge.
By John LaForge
Federal and state officials said in February six giant underground tanks holding
an explosive and toxic brew of highly radioactive liquid wastes are leaking at
the 570-square-mile Hanford Reservation, on the Columbia River in South Central
Washington State.
Hanford is perhaps the dirtiest reactor site in the world with 1,000 inactive
dumps, 100 to 200 square miles of contaminated ground water, and 50,000 drums of
plutonium wastes in temporary storage.
For 40 years, Hanford’s eight production reactors made plutonium for H-bombs,
and in the process its contractors dumped plutonium, cesium, technetium,
tritium, strontium and other isotopes into the air, soil, ground water and,
astonishingly, even directly into the Columbia River, the drinking water source
for downstream cities.
Hanford has 54 million gallons of the high-level liquids and sludge in 177 aged
and decrepit tanks. In the 1980s, the Department of Energy (DOE) disclosed that
up to 69 of the million-gallon tanks were leaking. February’s disclosure makes
75.
In 1998, the DOE said it expected all the tanks to leak eventually. Twenty years
ago Newsweek declared that all “177 unlabeled tanks leak radioactive glop.”
Several million gallons have since been removed for processing.
DOE spokeswoman Lindsey Geisler said late last month there was no immediate
health risk from the newly discovered leaks. This reassurance is suspect since
the DOE said for decades that tank wastes would take 10,000 years to reach the
ground water. It got there in less than 40.
A similar but contemporary PR twist came Feb. 22, when Washington Gov. Jay
Inslee said that the state would impose a “zero-tolerance” policy on radioactive
waste leaking into the soil. Looking back at Hanford’s record, a “zerocontainment” policy is more likely.
Radioactive Iceberg
This season’s leaks, which reportedly amount to 300 gallons per year, seem
barely newsworthy in view of the colossal dumping that’s been done at Hanford.
In the heyday of plutonium production, the Seattle Times has reported, “The DOE
estimates that as many as 750,000 curies of radioactive iodine, xenon, cesium,
strontium, plutonium and uranium may have been put into the Columbia River each
year in the 1950s.”
A week earlier the paper reported said, “Many of the releases involved dumping
of cooling water into the Columbia River.” Tim Connor of Hanford Watch in
Spokane told the paper that daily releases of 430 curies noted in one 1946
report were, “the equivalent of a Three Mile Island accident every hour.”
DOE officials admitted in 1991 that managers dumped 440 billion gallons of
radioactive liquids directly into the soil, using ditches, cribs, trenches and
injection wells, and that hazardous waste had “fouled the Columbia River.” A
1965 report from Hanford among 19,000 pages of documents declassified in 1986
says “a total of 6 million curies” of radioactive material were dumped directly
into the Columbia. In 2000, the DOE estimated that the tanks held 190 million
curies of radioactivity.
Leaving aside the billions of gallons of nuclear poisons poured directly into
it, the New York Times reported in Oct. 1997 that, “If leaks from the tanks
reach the Columbia River through ground water, radioactive material would
eventually be incorporated into the food chain and could expose people to
radiation for centuries.”
And even with all these millions of curies thrown into the soil, a ground water
manager at Hanford said in 2000 that the “worst” tank wastes, including
technetium-99 and cobalt-60, are “probably still 20 years away” from the
Columbia.
Twenty-five years since its reactors were shut down (they stopped making
plutonium in 1987) leaking plutonium tank wastes are not the only way that Cold
War cancers are still being dispensed from Hanford.
Wildfires burned 300 acres of the reservation in summer 2000, when Energy
Secretary Bill Richardson rushed to say July 1, “There does not appear to be any
contamination whatsoever.” Wrong again. By Aug. 3, plutonium was found to have
been lofted to 10 far-flung areas, including five Eastern Washington city
neighborhoods.
Even then, Jerry Leitch, an EPA official at the time, told the Seattle Post that
the amount of plutonium was below what’s considered a threat to health.Really? A
single atomic particle of plutonium if inhaled can cause lung cancer.
The estimated cost of cleanup, the most expensive anti-pollution effort in
history, has steadily increased. In 1989, DOE guessed it would take $57 billion
and 50 years. By 1997 its estimate was over $200 billion.
Explosive Risks
The DOE has long worried that its waste tanks, at Hanford and at Savannah River,
South Carolina, could explode due to the buildup of hydrogen gas or organic
vapors. Indeed, a 1965 explosion at Hanford ruptured one tank that subsequently
leaked 800,000 gallons of cooling water into the soil. Again on May 14, 1997, a
tank holding plutonium processing chemicals blew up, sending its heavy steel lid
and a plume of toxic gas through the roof.
Arjun Makhijani has said that an analysis by the DOE in 1978 put that chance of
hydrogen explosions Savannah River’s tanks at 1-in-10,000. Chances of an
explosion of organic vapors were ten times higher, or 1-in-1,000. Considering
the number of tanks, the chance of one of them having an explosion was one-in-50
each year.
In 1986, researcher Michael Blain at Boise State University showed that women in
Eastern Washington and Northern Idaho had elevated rates of thyroid and breast
cancer and said there was a high probability that “the excess cancers are
attributable to the release of radioactive iodine.”
Cancers, miscarriages and other health problems suffered by people in the area
have been blamed on the deliberate spewing of 5,500 curies of iodine-131 to the
atmosphere in a Dec. 3, 1949, experiment called “green run,” and on the offhand
dispersal of 340,000 curies in 1945 alone.
In 1974, Dr. Samuel Milham in Washington’s state health department published his
finding that men who had worked at Hanford had a 25 percent higher proportion of
cancer deaths than for similarly aged men in other work.
And in 1977, the journal Health Physics published Alice Stewart, Thomas Mancuso
and George Kneal’s finding of a 6 or 7 percent increased cancer effect in
Hanford workers. About this increase Dr. Stewart said, “It wasn’t much of an
effect but the shock was that there was any effect at all since the cancers were
occurring at radiation exposure levels well below the official limit of five
rads per year. It meant that the current standards for nuclear safety might be
as much as 20 times too high.”
In 1990, a DOE analysis of radiation exposures downwind from Hanford found that
infants and children were heavily contaminated because of drinking contaminated
milk. The Hanford Environmental Dose Reconstruction Project found that 13,500
people may have received doses over 33 rads of iodine-131 and that infants and
children closest to Hanford could have consumed between 650 and 3,000 rads. Even
a single rad can cause thyroid cancer and other illnesses.
Not to put too fine a point on it: Hanford’s latest six leaks are the tip of its
iceberg of radiation which is spreading to the Columbia River and beyond a
plague of cancer and disease that will never come to an end.
John LaForge works for Nukewatch, a nuclear watchdog and environmental justice
group in Wisconsin, and edits its quarterly newsletter. (nukewatchinfo.org)
‘October Surprise’ and ‘Argo’
Exclusive: Iran’s ex-President Bani-Sadr, in criticizing inaccurate history in
“Argo,” says most Iranian officials wanted a quick end to the 1980 U.S.-Iranian
hostage crisis, but Ronald Reagan’s presidential campaign struck a deal
with Ayatollah Khomeini to delay the hostages’ release, reports Robert Parry.
By Robert Parry
In a commentary on “Argo” winning the Best Picture Oscar, former Iranian
President Abolhassan Bani-Sadr has provided new details about how Ronald
Reagan’s 1980 campaign obstructed resolving the Iranian hostage crisis to
prevent President Jimmy Carter’s reelection.
Bani-Sadr’s commentaryfocused mostly on historical inaccuracies in “Argo,” which
depicted how six U.S. Embassy staffers made their escape when the embassy in
Tehran was overrun by Iranian militants on Nov. 4, 1979, in protest of the U.S.
government admitting the deposed and widely despised Shah of Iran for medical
treatment.
In the commentary published by the Christian Science Monitor on March 5, BaniSadr, now 79 and living outside Paris, said the movie ignored the fact that most
government officials favored freeing all the American personnel quickly. He
criticized “Argo” for portraying Iranian officials of that time as radical and
irrational.
The ex-president noted that “Argo” did quote him accurately as saying he
expected the Americans to be freed within a few days revealing that he based
that comment on a conversation he had had with Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini but
Bani-Sadr criticized the movie for leaving “the impression that the Iranian
government supported the occupation of the embassy and that I was a lone voice
in opposing it. This could not be further from the truth.”
Bani-Sadr said he and all other major candidates for the Iranian presidency
supported releasing the hostages. He noted that after taking that position, he
won the election with 76 percent of the vote. He added:
“Overall, 96 percent of votes in that election were given to candidates who were
against [the hostage-taking]. Hence, the movie misrepresents the Iranian
government’s stand in regard to hostage-taking. It also completely misrepresents
Iranians by portraying us as irrational people consumed by aggressive emotion.”
The October Surprise
However, after becoming president on Feb. 4, 1980, he found his efforts to
resolve the hostage crisis thwarted. Bani-Sadr said he discovered that
“Ayatollah Khomeini and Ronald Reagan had organized a clandestine negotiation,
later known as the ‘October Surprise,’ which prevented the attempts by myself
and then-U.S. President Jimmy Carter to free the hostages before the 1980 U.S.
presidential election took place. The fact that they were not released tipped
the results of the election in favor of Reagan.”
Though Bani-Sadr has talked and written about the Reagan-Khomeini collaboration
before, he added in his commentary on “Argo” that “two of my advisors, Hussein
Navab Safavi and Sadr-al-Hefazi, were executed by Khomeini’s regime because they
had become aware of this secret relationship between Khomeini, his son Ahmad,
the Islamic Republican Party, and the Reagan administration.”
Bani-Sadr wrote that after he “was deposed in June 1981 as a result of a coup
against me [and] after arriving in France, I told a BBC reporter that I had left
Iran to expose the symbiotic relationship between Khomeinism and Reaganism.”
Over the years, Republicans have adamantly denied that Reagan or his campaign
struck a deal with Iranian radicals to extend the hostage crisis through the
1980 election. But substantial evidence has built up supporting Bani-Sadr’s
account and indicating that the release of the 52 hostages just as Reagan was
taking the oath of office on Jan. 20, 1981, was no coincidence, that it was part
of the deal. [For the latest summary of the evidence, see Robert Parry’s
America’s Stolen Narrative.]
In December 1992, when a House Task Force was examining this so-called October
Surprise controversy and encountering fierce Republican resistance Bani-Sadr
submitted a letter detailing his behind-the-scenes struggle with Khomeini and
his son Ahmad over their secret dealings with the Reagan campaign.
Bani-Sadr’s letter was dated Dec. 17, 1992, and was part of a flood of lastminute evidence that implicated the Reagan campaign in delaying the hostage
release. However, by the time the letter and the other evidence arrived, the
leadership of the House Task Force had decided to simply declare the Reagan
campaign innocent.
Lawrence Barcella, who served as Task Force chief counsel, later told me that so
much incriminating evidence arrived late that he asked Task Force chairman, Rep.
Lee Hamilton, a centrist Democrat from Indiana, to extend the inquiry for three
months but that Hamilton said no. (Hamilton told me that he had no recollection
of Barcella’s request.)
Burying Bani-Sadr’s Letter
In the Task Force’s final report, issued on Jan. 13, 1993, Barcella’s team
simply misrepresented Bani-Sadr’s letter, mentioning it only briefly, claiming
that it was hearsay, and then burying its contents in a little-noticed annex to
the report along with other incriminating evidence. (I discovered additional
evidence of Republican guilt when I gained access to boxes of the Task Force’s
unpublished files.)
Bani-Sadr’s letter described the internal battles of the Iranian government over
the Republican intervention in the 1980 hostage crisis. Bani-Sadr recounted how
he threatened to expose the secret deal between Reagan’s campaign officials and
Islamic radicals close to Ayatollah Khomeini if the hostage-release delay wasn’t
reversed.
Bani-Sadr said he had first learned of the Republican “secret deal” with Iranian
radicals in July 1980 after Reza Passendideh, a nephew of Ayatollah Khomeini,
attended a meeting with Iranian financier Cyrus Hashemi and Republican lawyer
Stanley Pottinger in Madrid on July 2, 1980. Though Passendideh was expected to
return with a proposal from the Carter administration, Bani-Sadr said
Passendideh instead carried a plan “from the Reagan camp.”
“Passendideh told me that if I do not accept this proposal, they [the
Republicans] would make the same offer to my [radical Iranian] rivals. He
further said that they [the Republicans] have enormous influence in the CIA,”
Bani-Sadr wrote. “Lastly, he told me my refusal of their offer would result in
my elimination.”
Bani-Sadr said he resisted the threats and sought an immediate release of the
American hostages, but it was clear to him that the wily Khomeini was playing
both sides of the U.S. political street. Bani-Sadr said the secret Republican
plan to block release of the hostages remained a point of tension between him
and Khomeini. Bani-Sadr said his trump card was a threat to tell the Iranian
people about the secret deal that the Khomeini forces had struck with the
Republicans.
“On Sept. 8, 1980, I invited the people of Teheran to gather in Martyrs Square
so that I can tell them the truth,” Bani-Sadr wrote to the House Task Force.
“Khomeini insisted that I must not do so at this time. … Two days later, again,
I decided to expose everything. Ahmad Khomeini [the ayatollah’s son] came to see
me and told me, ‘Imam [Khomeini] absolutely promises’” to reopen talks with
Carter if Bani-Sadr would relent and not go public.
Bani-Sadr said the dispute led Khomeini to pass on a new hostage proposal to the
U.S. government through Khomeini’s son-in-law, Sadegh Tabatabai, in September
1980 (although that initiative ultimately was derailed by radical Islamists in
the Majlis or parliament).
A Corroborating Letter
The House Task Force also obtained and buried in the report’s annex another
Iranian letter bearing on the secret Republican initiative. On Aug. 18, 1980,
Iran’s then-acting foreign minister Sadegh Ghotbzadeh informed Iran’s Majlis
that “another point to consider is this fact. We know that the Republican Party
of the United States in order to win the presidential election is working hard
to delay the solution of the hostages crisis until after the U.S. election.”
Ghotbzadeh argued for a quicker resolution of the crisis so Iran’s new Islamic
government, which had consolidated its power in part because of the hostage
crisis, could “get on with other more pressing affairs than the hostage issue.”
He added, that “objection to this argument is that it will be in line with the
policy of the Republican Party leaders and supporters of [banker David]
Rockefeller and Reagan. [But] if we leave this issue unsolved, our new
government will be constantly under pressure and may not be able to succeed in
its affairs. In light of this consideration it is better to settle this crisis.”
As the hostage crisis wore on in late summer 1980, Ghotbzadeh made other
comments about the Republican interference, telling Agence France Press on Sept.
6, 1980, that he had information that Reagan was “trying to block a solution” to
the hostage impasse.
Bani-Sadr’s detailed letter meshed not only with Ghotzabeh’s contemporaneous
accounts but with a statement made by former Defense Minister Ahmad Madani, who
had lost to Bani-Sadr in the 1980 presidential race although Madani had received
covert CIA assistance funneled to his campaign through Iranian financier Cyrus
Hashemi.
Madani said he later discovered that Hashemi was double-dealing Carter by
collaborating with the Republicans. In an interview with me in the early 1990s,
Madani said Hashemi brought up the name of Reagan’s campaign chief William Casey
in connection with these back-channel negotiations over the U.S. hostages.
Madani said Hashemi urged Madani to meet with Casey, earning a rebuke from
Madani that “we are not here to play politics.”
Nevertheless, in December 1992, with ex-President Reagan already suffering from
Alzheimer’s disease and his successor George H.W. Bush defeated and on his way
out of office, the House Task Force chose what was considered the bipartisan
solution, to brush aside this Iranian information and a wealth of other material
implicating Reagan and Bush and simply declare that there was “no credible
evidence” of a Republican-Iranian deal.
[For a limited time, you can purchase Robert Parry’s trilogy on the Bush family
for only $34. For details, click here.]
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for
The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his new
book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book
(from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).
Recalling the Fight for Indian Rights
The genocide against Native Americans remains one of the worst blots on the
collective U.S. conscience, but the crime was widely ignored until four decades
ago when a movement of Indian activists returned to the historic massacre site
at Wounded Knee, as Bill Means recounted to Dennis J. Bernstein.
By Dennis J. Bernstein
It’s been four decades since the American Indian Movement was founded at Wounded
Knee, South Dakota, near the site of a U.S. Army massacre of Sioux Indians in
1890. Wounded Knee is also where a standoff occurred in 1973 between Indian
protesters and U.S. government agents.
Last month, AIM leaders came together on the Pine Ridge Reservation to recall
the movement’s founding on Feb. 27, 1973, and to assess where it stands today.
Russell Means, one key member of the original uprising, died last Oct. 22 at the
age of 72. He had been at the center of the AIM movement, as an organizer and
strategist of this movement for indigenous rights in North America.
Dennis J. Bernstein, a host of Pacifica Radio’s “Flashpoints,” spoke to Bill
Means, Russell’s younger brother and another AIM co-founder, about the
importance of the action in 1973, in which federal agents and Indians died, and
why AIM was founded. Just back from Vietnam fighting America’s battles abroad,
Bill Means took up the fight for his own people’s rights. Those actions
triggered the modern indigenous rights movement in North America.
DB: Of course we are sorrowful for the loss of your brother but we know how
crucial his role was in this. Maybe we can begin by you reminding us what
happened 40 years ago to make this happen and little about the role that you and
your brother played in this.
BM: First of all, greetings to the Pacifica family from the American Indian
Movement here at Wounded Knee, South Dakota. A very historical place, because as
you know in 1890 over 300 of our men, women and children were brutally murdered
by the Shetland Cavalry of the United States on Dec. 29, a few days after
Christmas in 1890.
And of course in 1973 the most historic event in the history of modern-day
Indian people in the 20th Century, the past millennium, Indian people from
across America came together here to make a statement here in Wounded Knee,
directed by our chiefs (and other leaders) who invited us here in Pine Ridge due
to the corruption and massive abuse of civil rights. They asked the American
Indian Movement to help in the redress of those rights.
So we came here as guests, and some of us are from here. Our Means family, our
father, originally came from here. So we are very honored, many of us were
living here at that time, it was good to have other members of AIM from around
the country to join us to help in the struggle, which became a worldwide
struggle for Indian people and eventually for Indigenous peoples rights.
You could say that the most profound effect of Wounded Knee (in 1973) was it
woke up the world’s populations, governments, people of the world, that
indigenous people, Indian people of America have the right to be who we are,
have the right to survive, our own human rights, agenda. So as Wounded Knee
brought back the bravery, identity of Indian people, there was a resurgence. It
was the catalyst for the Indian movements around the world to become well
organized into an Indigenous People’s movement of the world.
We have to mention we lost two very important warriors there, as well as many
after. We mention Frank Clearwater and Buddy LaMont, who were actually killed
inside Wounded Knee during the 71-day occupation in 1973. We like to recognize
them each year, as well as those we lost in 1890.
My role at the time when I came back as a Vietnam veteran was primarily the role
of a warrior. That is to defend the land and the people here in Wounded Knee
because we had many women, children and elders with us. It wasn’t just a bunch
of young militant Indians, but it was a very wide coalition of Indian tribes and
nations from around the country, and indeed our non-Indian supporters, who came
together at Wounded Knee to let the government know that John Wayne didn’t kill
us all.
But in that process we were able to make Indian people feel proud again. That is
one of the strongest memories of Wounded Knee, the renaissance of Indian pride
and identity of our culture. It was a time of the U.S. policies of assimilation
and acculturation. Many of our people forgot their languages, no longer knew
their ceremonies. They were under the Christian church’s influence, as far as
spiritual awareness, needs.
This is the time to re-establish that we as Lakota have our own language, our
own way of relating to the creator. This was a time to make people proud to wear
long hair again, to wear bead work, to be proud to be an Indian. That’s the
biggest thing we accomplished besides showing the world we still survive as
Indian people. We built the pride in the people themselves, ourselves, to stand
as Indian people.
DB: I am talking a look at the Atlantic Monthly. The way they are reporting this
today is that a number of members of this new movement went to Wounded Knee and
took the town hostage and demanded rights. How would you state that?
BM: We demanded our rights, but there were no hostages. They brought in two
senators, George McGovern and James Abourezk, senators from South Dakota, to
talk to the Gilderstein family, which owned the trading post. They admitted on
national television that they weren’t hostages, first of all. They weren’t
kidnapped, and they stayed there in support of us for several days.
The idea that there were hostages taken and that people were held there against
their will is a stereotype image that is often associated with social
movements. Violence is what sells papers. In this case, we are only defending
ourselves. So when the BIA [Bureau of Indian Affairs] police began to fire their
weapons against women and children, we had to respond, to defend those women and
children. This is the true history.
And as you know, one of the largest criminal trials in history lasted about ten
months – the trial of Dennis Banks and Russell Means who were dismissed because
the judge, Fred Nichol, federal judge, dismissed the case due to FBI
misconduct. So it didn’t even go to the jury for guilty or not-guilty. The judge
had over 30 counts of misconduct against the FBI, from coercion of witnesses to
illegal wiretaps to manipulation of evidence, selective prosecution.
Many of the issues were discussed in over 500 different legal cases that were
brought as the result of Wounded Knee. There were maybe one or two convictions
from over 500 cases. Our legal record, the right or wrong, the legalities of the
71-day occupation stand on the evidence. It is very clear that we were defending
ourselves. We were not the aggressor in terms of the 71-day occupation.
DB: Now you came back from Vietnam as a veteran and found yourself in a war at
home. When I read the introduction to this [segment], I almost said founded 40
decades ago instead of 4 decades ago. But I wouldn’t be mistaken at the core
because this did happen many, many, many years ago, because when we say Native
peoples, you were here first.
BM: That’s exactly right. History is repeating itself, like I mentioned earlier
about the 1890 massacre on the very site where we were occupying the village of
Wounded Knee. As a Vietnam veteran, I felt more like the Viet Cong and NLF when
they ran up against me as a soldier in Vietnam. All of a sudden, I was the VC,
the North Vietnamese fighting for the liberation of their country.
So I had a conflict of beliefs even when I was in Vietnam. But when you are in a
combat situation, the issue is survival, not politics. I got to relive that
conflict within myself, but also I felt like I was exonerated.
I had the rare
opportunity to allegedly defend the United States when I was in Vietnam. Then I
came back to defend my own people against the United States. It was a very
ironic situation when as a solider I am perpetuating the policies of the United
States in Vietnam and then a very few months later I am fighting against the
U.S. government, on our own lands, here on the reservation in South Dakota.
DB: I think it’s important to ask you, Bill, what has changed? Why did you go
there at first, and has anything changed? Poverty, medical care, schools, all
the battles back then, are they still alive and still necessary?
BM: Oh yes. I think the educational systems have improved 100 percent in terms
of having our own Indian educators, administrators. A lot of ceremonies have
been restored both within our school system and communities to make them
available to our youth. We have elders involved in education now. But we still
have a lot of poverty and problems with alcohol and drugs.
Like many of our minority friends and relatives here in America, we have issues
of poverty, extreme poverty. Shannon County, home of the reservation, is the
second poorest county in the U.S.
We were the first poorest 10 years ago. So if
moving from the first to the second poorest is improvement, I guess we
improved. But in terms of our identity, our people learning their culture,
practicing their traditional ways, I think we have been able to turn that
corner.
We are Lakota, indigenous people, we continue to fight for our treaty rights,
our land, against mining, against many environmental issues of our time, just
like the rest of America. At this time, we have our own people in place in
various institutions that control us, whether it is the government, schools,
churches, So I think things have improved from our self-determination. We have a
lot more of our people involved. But (as for) the social conditions, many of the
same things exist. But we have the tools in place now to make fundamental
changes that we didn’t have before.
We have control of our Indian schools on the reservation. All the schools are
now under control of community boards, district councils, under the control of
Indian people, rather than the BIA, Department of Interior, or the church. In
that sense, we made some fundamental changes. And we fight every day to improve
the conditions under which our people live.
DB: Can you talk about how you moved this movement into an international
framework through your work with the International Indian Treaty Council?
BM: Our work establishing the International Indian Treaty Council was a direct
result of what happened at Wounded Knee. Our chiefs, elders, leaders realized we
had worldwide recognition because of what happened in Wounded Knee. The press
was here from throughout the world so we realized we needed to do something with
the attention. We decided to take our treaties to the United Nations because
treaties are a foundation of our legal rights in the International community.
We began in 1974 by hosting a conference that was attended by over 94 Indian
nations throughout the hemisphere. Through that, in 1974 we formed the
International Indian Treaty Council. In 1977, we had our first international
conference at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland. There was a conference
on racism against the indigenous populations of the Western Hemisphere.
We looked at the United Nations as an instrument for human rights and realized
that indigenous peoples were excluded, not even mentioned. The major powers of
the United Nations said we were either ethnic minorities or only populations
that were internal matters of existing members of the United Nations. Therefore,
they said, the United Nations wasn’t authorized to interfere with internal
issues of member states. That was the position when we first went there.
As we dealt with the issues of treaties, which even the U.S. Constitution in
article 6 says that treaties shall be the supreme law of the land, then we were
able to show that we had standing as nations. We took that standing and began
our struggle within the institution of the United Nations.
Finally, after 30 years, on Sept. 13, 2007, the General Assembly finally passed
the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. That was a very important
document – the result of 30 years of work. So we established the international
part of our movement as a natural and mandated outgrowth of our treaty rights.
DB: Finally we cannot let you off as we remember the founding of AIM 40 years
ago without remembering that Leonard Peltier, who as you mentioned earlier is
still suffering in prison, has spent decades in prison, and is in physical
trouble. Tell us the significance of Leonard Peltier in this movement, why he is
Presente there in Wounded Knee and why freeing Peltier is an important battle to
fight.
BM: First of all, Peltier represents the treatment of Indian peoples by the
United States government for the last two centuries, since the treaty-making
times of the 1800s, and the justice system that we face. The case of Leonard
Peltier is a great example of the justice system we face, in that the U.S.
government takes someone who is an international figure and continues to deny
him his legal rights.
So after countless appeals in this legal process, he still represents the
injustice that Indian people suffer by U.S. policy. After about 37 years in
prison, he remains a political prisoner as recognized by many prestigious
international organizations such as Amnesty International and the World Council
of Churches, and leaders such as Bishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa.
Many have recognized Leonard as a person who did not receive a fair trail,
deserves a new trial and certainly should have been acquitted based on the
evidence. So Leonard Peltier remains the number one symbol of the United States’
treatment of the legal issues of the Indian people.
Dennis J. Bernstein is a host of “Flashpoints” on the Pacifica radio network and
the author of Special Ed: Voices from a Hidden Classroom.
You can access the
audio archives at www.flashpoints.net. He can be contacted
at [email protected].
Can Christians Turn Away from War?
Despite originating in Jesus’s messages of peace, Christianity has been arguably
the world’s most violent religion with its adherents committing genocide on all
continents except unpopulated Antarctica. Again and again, Christian churches
have blessed warfare, but a new generation is objecting, says Rev. Howard Bess.
By the Rev. Howard Bess
The present upheaval in Christian churches cannot be divorced from the comingof-age of a younger American population that is weary of war on the world scene,
fed up with violence in our American communities, and outraged at the violence
that is taking place in our homes. For many, violence has become unacceptable.
A key question that is taking center stage in this new developing Christianity
is: “Is God violent?” That topic is addressed in Rob Bell’s book, Love
Wins,which put him on the cover of Time magazine and won him a major piece in
The New Yorker.
Bell is not a lonely voice. He represents a growing base of American Christians
who are weary of an angry, violent God, who loves some people and not others,
loves some kinds of Christians but not others, loves Americans and not Chinese,
loves Christians but not Muslims, and endorses insane wars.
But, some Christians ask, what about the God found in the Bible? That God is
sometimes loving and sometimes violent. Thus, for many Christians, choosing a
God who favors no violence is a denial of the Holy Bible.
Which leads Christians to another question: Is the Bible indeed a Holy book
without error or is it a collection of writings that reveals ongoing discussions
and arguments about the nature and activities of the God of Abraham, Jacob,
Moses, David, Isaiah, Jeremiah and Jesus?
The growing American objection to violence is forcing a new look among
Christians at the authority of the Bible as a Holy book. In particular, the new
breed of emerging Christians is choosing to look to Jesus for authority rather
than the rest of the Bible. According to the historical record that survives,
Jesus was a non-violent, loving people’s rabbi.
He never inflicted violence on
others, nor did he endorse violence in his teachings.
When this new breed of emerging Christians looks at Jesus, they read simple
statements like “Love your enemies” and “Blessed are the peacemakers.”
They
hear him telling his disciple to “Put up your sword” with the added admonition,
“Those who live by the sword will also die by the sword.” These short sayings
are memorable and give good guidance to living life in a different, non-violent,
peaceful manner.
But can America become a non-violent, peaceful country? Or have the many wars of
our past poisoned our minds and hearts beyond recall? Have we fallen into the
lie that peace and security can only be attained with bigger armies and more
powerful weapons? Or, do we hear the warning of Jesus “Those who live by the
sword will die by the sword.”
I recently reread Martin Luther King’s “Pledge of Nonviolence.” He asked masses
of people to take the pledge, and it was one of the key motivators of mostly
peaceful change in America during the civil rights movement.
Today, the so-called emerging Christians are leaving traditional churches in
large numbers and for good reasons. One of those reasons is that traditional
churches (with some notable exceptions) have not pursued their role as
peacemakers.
Let us be fair. In the history of America, Christian churches and individuals
have done an amazing amount of good. The drive to rid the country of slavery was
church driven. The civil rights movement of the 1960s was church driven. The
nation counts on the services of the Salvation Army and Catholic Social
Services. We all benefit from Christian-based health and education networks.
However, Christian churches in America have utterly failed in communicating the
message of peace and non-violence that is written in large letters in the
teachings of Jesus. Just War Theory has been used to justify every war that
America has chosen to wage.
Some timid churches have prided themselves as being tolerant toward this debate.
But I believe Jesus would find the standard of tolerance disgusting. To be true
to Jesus, Christians must be pro-active and shout the message of peace and nonviolence from the rooftops.
I find the present upheaval in Christianity to be encouraging because people
involved appear to be taking Jesus seriously. Jesus said that a small light
could light up a whole room, that a bit of yeast could raise a whole loaf, and
that a bit of salt could flavor the whole pot.
Our new crop of Jesus-followers is part of our nation’s hope, leading the
country from war and violence to the Jesus way of peace and non-violence.
The Rev. Howard Bess is a retired American Baptist minister, who lives in
Palmer, Alaska.
His email address is [email protected].
Risky Wishful Thinking on Iran
Even as the Obama administration inches toward a compromise with Iran over its
nuclear program, U.S. officials keep up the tough talk to appease Official
Washington’s hardliners. But wishful thinking about Iran’s vulnerabilities could
raise the risk of conflict, say Flynt and Hillary Mann Leverett.
By Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett
Addressing the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s annual conference in
Washington on Monday, Vice President Joe Biden claimed that Iran is on the
defensive in its own neighborhood: “When we came to office … Iran was on the
ascendancy in the region. It is no longer on the ascendancy.”
Biden added that the Obama administration has “left Iran more isolated than
ever.” And that matters, Biden said, because “God forbid, if we have to act,
it’s important that the rest of the world is with us.”
Biden’s words reflect an all-too-familiar trope about Iran — that the non-Arab
and Shi’a Islamic Republic can be easily isolated in its regional environment,
thereby facilitating its ultimate demise. American elites have been making this
argument virtually since the Islamic Republic’s founding out of the 1979 Iranian
Revolution.
Over the last decade, though, on-the-ground reality in the Middle East has not
been kind to those espousing that argument. Indeed, by the end of George W.
Bush’s presidency, Western commentators were compelled to concede, by polls and
other evidence, that Iran’s opposition to America’s hegemonic assertions, its
support for groups resisting Israeli occupation of Arab populations, and its
pursuit of nuclear fuel cycle capabilities in defiance of America and Israel had
won it widespread approbation among Arab publics.
More recently, however, commentators have been asserting, with escalating
intensity, that Tehran’s heyday is over. According to them, a combination of
international criticism of Iran’s 2009 presidential election, President Obama’s
purportedly more “sensitive” approach to the Middle East, and the outbreak of
the Arab Awakening has eviscerated popular support for the Islamic Republic
across the region.
This narrative’s latest iteration comes in Jim Zogby’s new eBook, Looking at
Iran: How 20 Arab and Muslim Nations View Iran and Its Policies. Zogby has long
been a stalwart advocate for Arab-American rights and a more balanced U.S.
approach to the Arab-Israeli conflict — issues on which we are proud to have
supported him.
In his new eBook, however, Zogby has a different agenda. Using survey data from
17 Arab countries as well as from Azerbaijan, Pakistan, and Turkey, Zogby posits
that popular support for Iran in the Arab and Muslim worlds has declined sharply
over the past several years — from a 2006 high to a point today at which Muslim
publics now view the Islamic Republic in deeply negative terms.
Though Zogby claims he “did not write a book that prescribes specific policy,”
his latest work seems aimed less at explanation than at legitimating a
particular strategic agenda — one that increases the chance of another U.S.initiated war in the Middle East.
Zogby opens with a clear thesis: “When Iran was seen [by Arab publics] through
the prism of U.S. and Israeli practices, it won” the battle for regional public
opinion; alternatively, “when Iran is judged by its regional behavior and its
domestic repression, it loses support.” In his polls, though, Zogby deploys
questions asking respondents to judge the Islamic Republic and its policies in
artificial isolation from U.S. and Israeli practices, effectively guaranteeing
results affirming his thesis.
Take, for example, Zogby’s treatment of Iran’s regional standing, assessed by
its perceived favorability. Zogby’s data show that, when asked to rate Iran
without reference to other regional or international players, ever larger
percentages of Arabs and other Muslims over the past seven years have viewed the
Islamic Republic unfavorably.
In Zogby’s most recent polls, from 2012, Iran was seen favorably by majorities
in just two Arab countries (Iraq and Lebanon). Zogby also uses
favorability/unfavorability data to argue that America’s regional standing is
improving, because of a “less aggressive U.S. posture and the expectations that,
in a second Obama administration, the United States might step up efforts to
press Israel to make concessions for peace with the Palestinians.”
Sounds bad for Iran and at least relatively positive for America, right? But set
Zogby’s favorability/unfavorability data for Iran next to equivalent data for
the United States — a juxtaposition more reflective of how Arabs and Muslims
actually evaluate their strategic environment — and a different picture emerges.
Even with the (slight) improvement in U.S. standing since 2011, Zogby’s 2012
data show that America’s favorability scores surpass Iran’s in just four
countries — Azerbaijan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. By contrast, Iran has
higher favorability than the United States in 14 Arab countries and in Pakistan,
and is effectively tied with America in Jordan, a longtime U.S. security
partner.
Moreover, Zogby neglected to ask questions that would almost certainly have
elicited answers at odds with his thesis. He notes, for example, that in 2008
his data put Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hizballah Secretary
General Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah (a key Iranian partner) high among world leaders
most admired by Arabs.
But he fails to include subsequent surveys by Zogby International (a polling
firm founded by his brother) and other studies that continue identifying
Ahmadinejad and Nasrallah among world leaders most admired by Arabs.
Similarly, while Zogby highlights data from his 2012 survey showing that a
majority of respondents now think that Iran’s nuclear program “makes the region
less secure” and that there should be a nuclear-weapons-free zone in the Middle
East, he fails to put regional attitudes about Iran’s nuclear activities in a
comparative context.
If he had, he might well have gotten results like those obtained by the
University of Maryland’s annual Arab Public Opinion Surveys, showing that, by
orders of magnitude, Arabs identify Israel and the United States as much bigger
threats to them than Iran.
He might also have gotten results like those obtained by Arab researchers,
showing that support for a nuclear-weapons-free Middle East is driven by concern
over Israel’s nuclear arsenal and that, until Israel forswears nuclear weapons,
regional publics think other countries have the right to pursue them, too. But
such results would have undercut Zogby’s main thesis.
Zogby asserts, “it is the behavior of Iran and its allies” — in various regional
arenas, in its nuclear activities, and in its internal politics — “that have led
to the region’s alienation from the Islamic Republic.” This overlooks massive
and sustained efforts by Gulf Arab monarchies in recent years to portray the
political awakening of Shi’a communities — a natural part of the political
awakening of Arab societies generally — as Iranian “meddling.”
It is not Iran, but America’s Gulf Arab allies that have played the sectarian
“card” — not just through well-funded propaganda, but also by backing violent
(and virulently anti-Shi’a) Sunni extremists across the Middle East. In this
context, it is remarkable how well Iran’s regional standing has held up.
Notwithstanding Zogby’s reference to Iran’s domestic “repression,” when
disenfranchised Middle Eastern publics get to vote on their political futures,
they choose some version of what the Islamic Republic gives Iranians the chance
to pursue — the integration of participatory politics and Islamist governance.
Every democratically-elected government that has come to power during the Arab
Awakening — in Tunisia, Libya, and, most importantly, Egypt — has sought
improved relations with Tehran. When popular sovereignty finally prevails in
Bahrain, a new Bahraini government will, too.
Zogby notes that substantial majorities of Arabs and other Muslims continue to
oppose using military force against Iran over the nuclear issue. But the most
disturbing aspect of Looking at Iran is its implicit usefulness for those
arguing that America could use force against Iran with little risk of regional
blowback. This argument is profoundly — and dangerously — mistaken.
After failed U.S. invasions-cum-occupations in Afghanistan and Iraq, a war on
terror that has deeply alienated Muslim societies, and with ongoing U.S. support
for open-ended Israeli occupation of Arab populations, America’s position in the
Middle East is hanging by a thread.
If, in this climate, America launches another war to disarm another Middle
Eastern country of weapons of mass destruction it doesn’t have, the blowback
against U.S. interests will make the damage done to America’s regional position
by the Iraq war look almost trivial by comparison.
American elites need to abandon myths about the Islamic Republic, which isn’t
about to collapse or be overthrown by its own population — and isn’t being
rejected by its neighbors, either. For its own interests, the United States
needs to come to terms with Iran — through serious diplomacy, not sanctions and
force.
Flynt Leverett served as a Middle East expert on George W. Bush’s National
Security Council staff until the Iraq War and worked previously at the State
Department and at the Central Intelligence Agency. Hillary Mann Leverett was the
NSC expert on Iran and from 2001 to 2003
was one of only a few U.S. diplomats
authorized to negotiate with the Iranians over Afghanistan, al-Qaeda and Iraq.
They are authors of the new book, Going to Tehran. [This article originally
appeared at Huffington Post.]
Dangerous ‘State Sovereignty’ Myth
Exclusive: In the U.S. system, the “supreme law” of the land is set by the
Constitution and the federal government, though states, counties and cities have
wide discretion over local matters. But problems arise when right-wingers start
espousing the notion of “state sovereignty,” says Robert Parry.
By Robert Parry
During her half-term as governor, Sarah Palin would refer to the “sovereign
state of Alaska.” In doing so, she was like some other governors who call their
states “sovereign” as a rhetorical show of defiance against the federal
government.
For many years, this practice has been popular among the states of the Old
Confederacy and, more recently, in states that were not slave-owning but are now
led by right-wing governors who believe the federal government has no business
telling the states how to run their affairs.
But the “state sovereignty” rhetoric today is moving beyond defiant words, as
the Republican Party asserts that states should be allowed to change their
voting rules to suppress the voting rights of blacks, Hispanics, Asian-Americans
and young urban whites who are seen as likely Democratic voters.
The Republican intent is to transform much of the United States not just the Old
Confederacy but pretty much all states under GOP control into a modern-day land
of Jim Crow where the ballots of white rural voters will be given extra weight
over black, brown and young urban voters.
This initiative, which is now before the U.S. Supreme Court in a case seeking to
gut the Voting Rights Act, is essentially that the “independent sovereign”
rights of states should trump the rights of racial minorities to vote, despite
the Fifteenth Amendment, which gives the federal government the explicit power
to protect those voting rights.
Based on oral arguments last week, many Court observers now believe that the
five right-wing justices will strike down the heart of the law, Section Five,
which requires jurisdictions with a history of racist voting laws to get prior
approval from the federal government before they change their voting rules.
One of those right-wing justices, Anthony Kennedy, indicated that he felt
Section Five was an unconstitutional infringement on Alabama as an “independent
sovereign.” In other words, Alabama’s constitutional right to do what it wants
should trump the right of minorities to participate fairly in the democracy.
However, while there is specific language in the Constitution prohibiting states
from infringing on the right to vote, there is no language referring to states
as “independent” or “sovereign.” That wording comes from the Articles of
Confederation (which governed the country from 1777 to 1787), but was expunged
by the Constitution, which transferred national sovereignty from the 13 original
states to “We the People of the United States.”
State Prohibitions
Beyond dropping the language about “independent” and “sovereign” states, the
Constitution also contains a long list of prohibited activities by the states,
including bans on coining money, entering into treaties and acting against a
foreign country (Article I, Section 10). The Constitution further dictates the
structure of state governments, requiring them to operate as republics (Article
IV, Section 4). Most significantly, the Constitution makes federal law
“supreme,” giving federal courts the power to strike down state statutes deemed
unconstitutional.
That provision in Article VI states: “This Constitution, and the Laws of the
United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made,
or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the
supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby,
any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary
notwithstanding.”
In other words, the Constitution constrains what the states can do and sets
rules for their structures. If, say, a state wanted to become a monarchy, the
federal government would step in and say no. When 11 slave states tried to
secede from the Union after Abraham Lincoln’s election in 1860, they were
declared in rebellion and were militarily defeated by a federal army.
Other provisions in the three amendments following the Civil War the Thirteenth,
abolishing slavery; the Fourteenth, requiring equal protection under the law;
and the Fifteenth, prohibiting racial discrimination in voting further sent a
clear message that the states were obliged to submit to the sovereignty of “We
the People of the United States.”
However, it has remained popular in some circles to assert that the states
possess something close to equal sovereignty with the federal government. Some
legal scholars use the phrase “dual sovereignty,” suggesting that neither side
is dominant, much like grade schools give out “participation trophies” for
field-day competitions.
While such language may make the advocates of “states’ rights” feel better, it
isn’t really true. By definition, “sovereignty” means “having supreme rank,
power, or authority.” It is, in that sense, a superlative. There can be only one
“sovereign” and under the U.S. Constitution it is clearly “We the People of the
United States” and the officials that we elect to national office.
Of course, states have some rights as do towns and individuals. You can claim, I
suppose, that you have some “sovereignty” over yourself, that your family has
“sovereignty” over your home; your county board has “sovereignty” over local
affairs; and your state has “sovereignty” over much state business.
However, all those “sovereignties” are limited by law and the “supreme” law of
the land is the U.S. Constitution and the federal statutes that are enacted by
the U.S. Congress and signed by the President.
Silly Defiance
Normally, of course, no one would care when Palin and other right-wing political
figures call their states “sovereign” as a show of defiance. The problem comes
when they start believing it. In that sense, “state sovereignty” is a bit like
the honorific title “Kentucky colonel.” No one minds guys calling each other
“Colonel” unless they start taking it seriously and leading soldiers into
battle. Then real harm can be done.
Similarly, real harm can derive from the myth of “state sovereignty,” especially
now that the Right has captured the majority of the U.S. Supreme Court. Anthony
Kennedy, John Roberts, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito are
political activists seeking to impose a Neo-Confederate interpretation on the
Constitution.
These justices may call themselves “strict constructionists” who believe in a
literal reading of the Constitution. However, if they destroy the Voting Rights
Act based on Kennedy’s thesis about “independent sovereign” states, they will be
seeing language in the Constitution that isn’t there.
Nowhere in the document is there wording about states being “independent
sovereigns.” And, the words aren’t there because the Framers the likes of George
Washington and James Madison willfully removed them, with prejudice as a court
might say.
General Washington despised the concept of state sovereignty viscerally because
of his experience as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army, which often
suffered when states reneged on promised support. Madison saw the Articles of
Confederation threatening the nation’s hard-won independence and holding back
the nation’s economic growth.
As the chief architect of the Constitution, Madison gave the federal government
sweeping authority over a wide variety of national matters, including commerce.
He wanted to give Congress direct power over state laws but settled for federal
courts having the authority to review and strike down state statutes. [For more
on this history, see Robert Parry’s America’s Stolen Narrative.]
Yes, I know today’s Neo-Confederates make much of the Tenth Amendment, which
asserts that “the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution,
nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or
to the people.”
But the Right’s historical revisionists miss the key point here. The
Constitution already had granted broad powers to the federal government so the
states were left largely with powers over local matters — and even those actions
could be struck down if they were found to violate federal law.
To further appreciate how modest the Tenth Amendment is, you must compare its
wording with Article II of the Articles of Confederation, which is what
it replaced. Article II stated that “each state retains its sovereignty,
freedom, and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right, which is
not by this Confederation expressly delegated.” In other words, the power
relationship between the states and the federal government had been flipped.
Still, today’s Neo-Confederates make mischief with the inconsequential Tenth
Amendment, transforming it into some grand governing principle when it was just
a rhetorical sop to the Anti-Federalists, who fiercely opposed the Constitution
because they recognized what it was, a major shift of power from the states to
the federal government.
Also, throughout American history, “states’ rights” have been associated with
some of the most shameful episodes, including the secession of the Confederate
states in defense of slavery and later the imposition of racial segregation
across the South through legal trickery and terrorist violence.
Surely, the federal government has not been free from fault. It has too often
participated in or tolerated racist and other anti-democratic acts, but it also
has during some of the nation’s proudest moments intervened on behalf of human
rights as enshrined in the Constitution. That history is now being tested again.
[For a limited time, you can purchase Robert Parry’s trilogy on the Bush family
for only $34. For details, click here.]
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for
The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his new
book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book
(from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).
Breeding Anti-US Suspicions
When U.S. policymakers throw their weight around internationally, they may think
their actions are justified and perhaps in a narrow sense some are but the
U.S. also building up a reservoir of resentment and suspicion that hurts
American interests in the long term, as ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar explains.
By Paul R. Pillar
A story from northwest Pakistan involves a discrepancy between reality and
perception with regard to U.S. drone strikes. Last month two attacks in the
tribal belt generated the kind of spreading news that has come to be routinely
associated with the drones.
A couple of al-Qaeda types are killed, but so are several villagers. The
Pakistani foreign ministry lodges a protest with the U.S. embassy. According to
American officials, however, the United States and U.S. drones were not involved
at all in the attacks. “They were not ours,” said one official.
American speculation is that the Pakistani military conducted the attacks and
attributed them to the United States to escape blame for the collateral damage.
If so, this represents a reversal of a previous Pakistani practice of claiming
responsibility for what really were U.S. drone strikes, to escape the
embarrassment of allowing the Americans to conduct, or not preventing them from
conducting, attacks on Pakistani territory.
So a variable in this case is whatever public relations problem the Pakistani
military and government most want to avoid in any given week. There is a larger
phenomenon at work, however, which helps to account for the believability of the
Pakistani cover story.
Once the United States gains a reputation for something, for good or for ill,
the reputation not only becomes hard to shake but also gets applied by foreign
populations in an exaggerated or overly expansive way. People are reacting to
the reputation more than to individual events, because their perception of an
event is heavily colored by the reputation.
This phenomenon can sometimes work to the advantage of the United States. It is
involved in deterrence; a reputation for striking back can dissuade others from
some transgression without actually having to strike them. But more often lately
it has been a disadvantage.
This applies particularly to the reputation the United States has acquired for
Muslim-bashing. Americans tend not to understand the phenomenon fully because
they see this reputation as a bum rap and know their intentions are better than
that.
They not only do not realize what is coloring other Muslims’ interpretation of
American actions in their part of the world; they also miss how some of their
actions are adding to the reputation and thereby coloring the interpretation of
future events.
The policy lesson in this is to take full account of the reputation-based
multiplier effect in weighing the costs and benefits of actions ranging from
drone strikes to military deployments and much else. The policy-maker needs to
realize how existing reputations will color how foreign publics and governments
interpret whatever action is being contemplated.
He also needs to realize how the action may in turn affect the reputation of the
United States and thus affect how the United States will be either thanked or
hated for future actions, maybe even actions the United States itself does not
commit.
Paul R. Pillar, in his 28 years at the Central Intelligence Agency, rose to be
one of the agency’s top analysts. He is now a visiting professor at Georgetown
University for security studies. (This article first appeared as a blog post at
The National Interest’s Web site. Reprinted with author’s permission.)
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As always, thanks for your support.
Robert Parry
Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the
Associated Press and Newsweek. He founded Consortiumnews.com in 1995 as the
Internet’s first investigative magazine. He saw it as a way to combine modern
technology and old-fashioned journalism to counter the increasing triviality and
timidity of the mainstream U.S. news media.
Free Shipping on Parry’s Books
We are again offering free shipping on Robert Parry’s books sold through the
Consortiumnews Web site. Plus a percentage of your order will go to help support
the site’s investigative journalism during its 18th year of operation.
This offer applies to Parry’s latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, as well
as earlier ones Lost History, Secrecy & Privilege and Neck Deep (co-authored
with Sam and Nat Parry).
Parry’s old-fashioned investigative journalism relying on documents and firstperson accounts correct some of the most important chapters in U.S. history by
rewriting the stories of powerful men, including Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon,
David Rockefeller, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush.
You can get these valuable books and help support future investigative
journalism by clicking here, or you can make your order by check sent to: The
Media Consortium; 2200 Wilson Blvd.; Suite 102-231; Arlington VA 22201. Or you
can use Paypal. Our Paypal address is named after our e-mail address:
“consortnew @ aol.com.”
Just make sure you include your mailing address in the
message.
Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the
Associated Press and Newsweek. He founded Consortiumnews.com in 1995 as the
Internet’s first investigative magazine. He saw it as a way to combine modern
technology and old-fashioned journalism to counter the increasing triviality and
timidity of the mainstream U.S. news media.