"The struggle is for power not reform." We must make clear that it is imperialism that degrades and destroys the earth, makes water a commodity, food a luxury, education an impossibility, and health care a distant dream. The following is excerpted from a presentation by Ajamu Baraka to a national webinar Electoral School of the Black Is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations, June 13 and 14. Continue reading

By Don Fitz Scenes of sorrow spread across the US. Football teams apologize. Cops march with demonstrators. Democratic Party politicians call for "structural change" in police departments. Some of these are sincere. Others are crocodile tears shed in hopes that people will be pacified with assurances that turn out to be vague rhetoric devoid of meaning or else empty promises that will never be fulfilled. Yet, there are changes that would cost little, could happen quickly, and be reminders to future generations of what happened in 2020. Continue reading

Lisa Savage in her vegetable garden, from her YouTube series of short videos speaking directly to voters. May was a big month in Maine for the US Senate campaign of Lisa Savage, running against incumbent Susan Collins under ranked choice voting. We’ve grown our team with two great additions, conducted an art auction fundraiser that attracted supporters from all over the US, and received exciting press coverage including the publication of Lisa’s op-ed in the Portland Press Herald. Continue reading

By Margaret Flowers and Kevin ZeeseMay 11, 2020 In the face of the twin crises of the COVID-19 pandemic and economic collapse, people are organizing mutual aid networks to provide food, medicines and other basics to those in need. This is done in the spirit of solidarity, not charity, a non-hierarchical empowering approach versus a hierarchical exploitative approach. Continue reading

The Trump Administration is determined to "Put China In Its Place," a white supremacist mindset that will inevitably lead to monumental errors of judgment. Even before becoming the 45th president of the United States, Donald Trump had one consistent foreign enemy – China. Partly fueled by his intrinsic white supremacy and his antipathy for the liberal elite "globalists" who evoked his personal inferiority complex, Trump has never wavered from his fierce opposition to what he saw as the "yellow peril" from China. Continue reading

Climate activist Bill McKibben took to the New Yorker recently to advise me and the Green Party to stand down our presidential campaign and instead work for ranked-choice voting (RCV) so we don’t “spoil” the election for Joe Biden (“Instead of Challenging Joe Biden, Maybe the Green Party Could Help Change Our Democracy,” April 15). The problem with McKibben’s advice is that the Green Party’s demand for replacing the Electoral College with a ranked-choice national popular vote for president will not even be raised in the presidential campaign if the Greens are not in the race. Continue reading

By Don Fitz Preparing for a pandemic requires understanding that a change in the relationship between people is primary and the production of things is secondary and flows from social factors. Investors in profit-based medicine cannot comprehend this concept. Nothing could exemplify it more clearly than Cuba’s response to the corona virus (COVID-19). The US dawdled for months before reacting. Cuba’s preparation for COVID-19 began on January 1, 1959. On that day, over sixty years before the pandemic, Cuba laid the foundations for what would become the discovery of novel drugs, bringing patients to the island, and sending medical aid abroad. Continue reading

The gross inequalities and declining standards of life in the United States are magnified by the corona crisis, pushing already marginalized populations to the brink. There is an old saying that if America catches a cold, black people get pneumonia. The communicable disease reference is especially relevant now that the COVID-19 corona virus pandemic has created a crisis in this country. A privatized health care system worsened a medical emergency whose impact could have been mitigated if the United States was as advanced as it claims to be. Continue reading