RIP: My Bucks County Courier Times Column Ended Thursday

I am grateful for your readership, tips, support, and friendships that resulted from my column. However, you'll still be able to find me at The Bucks County Beacon and in this newsletter.

“Bucks County progressives often don’t get the coverage or credit they deserve. That’s about to change,” I wrote in my inaugural column for the Bucks County Courier Times, March 11, 2021. I went on to let readers know:

My column will serve as a megaphone for local progressive voices, progressive concerns, and progressive solutions. It will be an antidote to the right-wing extremism and policies that have sickened our nation.

I did my best to keep that promise to you every other week for 14 months in both the Courier Times and The Intelligencer. But that comes to an end today.

First, this wasn’t the result of an organized campaign by Bucks County’s far-right blob, which includes groups like ReOpen Bucks, Pennridge for Educational Liberty, The Proud American Patriots Network, and a gaggle of GOP/MAGA digital brown shirts. They tried repeatedly to cancel me and failed — and knowing that brings a smile to my face.

What actually happened is that apparently Gannett thinks it is a good idea to cut their opinion page to one day a week. One day and limited real estate for the community to have their voices heard in a thoughtful manner that I believe is much more useful than venting on social media. Writing a column requires research, reflection, and revision.

So they don’t have the space to publish me regularly, nor are they willing to continue paying me.

To be honest, I never thought I would have been given the opportunity, or that I would write largely about local politics, let alone at a paper I relished in lambasting for its, at best, blindspots of local right-wing extremism, at worst platforming and appeasing of it. And I am grateful to them that they, at least for a little while, had a regular progressive voice to represent Bucks County’s growing, robust, and vibrant progressive community. I hope I served you well.

In the meantime, I will continue to write here, as well as at the Bucks County Beacon, the new progressive media outlet where I am editor-in-chief. And one thing I’ve really tried to do from the start is have the editorial page there be a megaphone for local progressives. Now that the Courier Times, or rather Gannett, is essentially muzzling community voices by severely limiting community opeds, it seems that the Beacon is even more necessary and vital to the community than it already was.

I hope you will consider subscribing to it and SUPPORTING it!

I’ve decided to include links to all my columns below, which you can also find HERE.

Did you have a favorite? I would love to hear from you in the comments. Thanks!

Mychalejko: On the 'expressway to unconstitutional censorship'

When the ACLU, the American Library Association's Office of Intellectual Freedom, the Education Law Center of Pennsylvania, the Pennsylvania School Library Association, and the district's own librarians oppose a proposed library policy believing it'd trample on students' constitutional rights, impede their education, and inhibit librarians and educators from doing their jobs, you'd think this would raise a red flag.

Mychalejko: These Bucks County mothers want abortion to remain safe and legal

The looming collision of church and state revealed after the draft Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade was leaked left many Bucks County mothers unsettled in the runup to Mother's Day. I talked with Kaethe from Doylestown who preferred not to give her last name.

Mychalejko: Local Dems right, newspaper wrong about NAC event

Now why would Democrats be upset with their party’s chairman doing an event hosted by someone who thinks Democrats hate America, and themselves, and are “self-loathing, violent, mean, aggressive?”

Mychalejko: Parental rights - and wrongs - in public education

Parents have rights. No matter where you fall on the political spectrum, that's not controversial. But when you consider where these rights begin and end with public education, that's a different story.

Mychalejko: Don't let Big Oil, Gas cynically profit from Putin's war

The oil and gas industry and Republicans in Harrisburg aren't letting the crisis of Russia's invasion of Ukraine go to waste as they push for policy changes that'll hurt the planet, workers and consumers. The American Petroleum Institute took to Twitter Feb.

Mychalejko: Bucks County must band together to 'Ban the Bomb'

Nobody wins a nuclear war. That's why the moment we find ourselves in now with Russia's invasion of Ukraine serves as a stark reminder about why we need a resurgent anti-nuclear weapons movement. "If we had a nuclear war between the U.S. and Russia ...

Mychalejko: Bucks County family's hearts ache for war-torn Ukraine

A high school classmate reached out to me on Facebook last week when she saw an article I posted about Russians risking life and liberty to protest their president's invasion of Ukraine. It was an act of solidarity I thought should be recognized.

Mychalejko: Rosa Parks fought against systemic racism and war, championed reproductive rights

“Rosa Parks actually has a life of activism and she is a lifelong freedom fighter,” Jeanne Theoharis, author of The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks, told me.

Mychalejko: Combat the climate crisis before there's nothing left to build back

Given the polarizing times we live in, it is comforting to see that Americans can still find common ground when it comes to protecting our nation - and planet.

Mychalejko: It's time to make Guantánamo Bay prison history

Herb Geraghty was 6 years old when the Bush administration opened Guantánamo Bay in 2002 to house detainees from its so-called Global War on Terror. Twenty years later the Saint Ephrem and Bensalem High School alumni wants this detention and torture center that Amnesty International called the " gulag of our times " finally shut down.

Mychalejko: Pennridge School District dehumanizes LGBTQ+ parents, students

When I sent Lesléa Newman a message requesting an interview about her book " Heather Has Two Mommies" being taken off the library shelves in Pennridge School District, she was actually in conversation with dozens of other children's book creators who are very concerned about the current uptick in book banning and censorship.

Mychalejko: How the PA GOP stole Christmas

“The message being sent to the taxpayers is that your livelihood isn’t as important as these culture war issues that they use to divide us,” said Nick Pressley, director of campaigns for the Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center. “The GOP has spent all their time on issues that divide us.”

Mychalejko: El Salvador offers a dark glimpse into our post-Roe future

Manuela was a 33-year-old Salvadoran mother of two when she fell and suffered a stillbirth. She awoke handcuffed to a hospital bed after hemorrhaging and losing consciousness. Hospital workers called the authorities, accusing her of inducing an abortion, and police arrived to interrogate her while she was still shackled.

Mychalejko: Bucks County needs to talk about systemic racism

Black people in Pennsylvania and New Jersey are incarcerated at rates over 7 and 12 times more than whites respectively, according to a report published last month. The Sentencing Project, the criminal justice reform organization that authored it, called racial and ethnic disparities in state prisons across the nation "staggering."

Mychalejko: Vanguard Group must stop financing the planet's destruction

The Vanguard Group Inc. has a " Very Big Problem." The Malvern-based investment firm, the world's second largest money manager with its over $7 trillion in global assets, profits from fossil fuel industries at the expense of the planet. Vanguard is the largest global financier in coal with $86 billion in investments, and second largest in oil and gas.

Mychalejko: Why is your neighbor flying that all-black American flag?

They've been popping up across the country for months, and now they've been spotted in Bucks County in places such as Perkasie, Plumstead, Buckingham, and Jamison. The all-black American flags being flown by so-called local patriots apparently means " no quarter given" and may even imply a willingness to use (lethal) violence against perceived enemies, essentially any non-Trumper who threatens their washed out, retrograde vision of what the U.S.

Mychalejko: Right-wing 'media' triggers misinformed right-wing rage

For years I have felt like Republicans and Democrats live in two completely different worlds. This has nothing to do with having a disparate set of beliefs about how the economy should run, or how the country should conduct its foreign policy. Those debates should be welcome and part of the political discourse.

Mychalejko: Bucks County youth must rise up to defend education

In one of Langston Hughes' most famous poems about the Black experience in America, "Harlem," the author asks, "What happens to a dream deferred?" In school boards across Pennsylvania that dream can be found being suffocated, stifled, and suppressed as a result of a coordinated right-wing campaign to whitewash history, and education in general.

Mychalejko: Bucks County GOP must reject militias, QAnon, Proud Boys, and other extremism

It's now or never. The Bucks County Republican Committee is at a crossroads. It either continues down the path of growing radicalization within its rank and file, or it reckons with and rolls back the party's insurgent extremism.

Mychalejko: Rather than risk their child's life, this family left Bucks County

Ben Franklin once quipped, "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." Sadly, 285 years after he said that, this appeal to common sense is seemingly too profound to be understood or applied by the Central Bucks School Board which, on Tuesday night, essentially encouraged families to obtain medical exemptions from mask-wearing for students, saying the district won't actually require a medical diagnosis or signature from a doctor.

Mychalejko: Join the Civil Rights movement of 2021 and beyond

Republicans in Pennsylvania and across the country are working overtime to make the Jim Crow era in this country rise again. "Our voting rights are in peril," Kadida Kenner, executive director of the New Pennsylvania Project , told me.

Mychalejko: Anti-Critical Race Theory hysteria revives McCarthyism, Klan politics

If you want to understand the wave of anti-Critical Race Theory (CRT) paranoia, conspiracy, and fear-mongering consuming school board meetings and elections across Bucks County and the country, just turn to history.

Mychalejko: History shows root causes of Central American migration

The past is prologue for the present, especially when considering the "root causes" of immigration from Central America today. I spoke with Doylestown's Heidi Roux, assistant director of Immigrant Rights Action, and a Salvadoran immigrant herself who fled her home country as a young child in the early 1980s as it was embroiled in a bloody civil war.

Mychalejko: Conversion therapy is a barbaric abuse of LGBTQ youth and it's legal in PA

This Pride Month I ask straight cis-gendered readers to take a moment while reading this column to exercise empathy. "Imagine if the norm was dating the same sex and you were the one that was considered the 'other,'" Leon Mopecha, an African non-binary 2017 Pennridge High School graduate, said to me.

PA can support workers, protect the environment by funding public transit

Lawmakers in Harrisburg are on the clock to pass legislation that will continue support for working class and communities of color, boost the state's economy and improve air quality, as funding for public transit is scheduled to sunset at the end of 2022.

Mychalejko: Only a political uprising can save PA's higher education system

Pennsylvania's higher education faculty and students need to stand up, fight back, and demand a different vision for the future of the state's higher education system because right now one thing is clear: their voices don't matter.

Mychalejko: Vote against right-wing extremism May 18

When Democrats, independents, and moderate Republicans united in November to hand President Joe Biden a colossal 7 million popular vote victory against Donald Trump I could almost feel the collective sigh of relief across the nation. However, I'm afraid voters may have gotten complacent.

Op-Ed: To 'Restore our Earth,' we need the THRIVE Agenda

Don't celebrate Earth Day, organize! This year's theme, " Restore our Earth," asks us to repair the damage we've already wrought and reduce our carbon footprint.

Hysterical social media mob targets Doylestown businesswoman

All she wanted to do was say thank you. Donna Gouldey, a Doylestown shop owner, wanted to say thanks to frontline and essential workers, senior citizens, those at high risk, and anyone else who received a COVID-19 vaccine by offering them a discount at her store Allora Gifts & Home Décor.

Is Turning Point USA a Trojan horse of right-wing extremism for Pennridge students?

Both the Anti-Defamation League and Southern Poverty Law Center, two national organizations that monitor hate groups and extremism nationally, have documented numerous cases of racism, bigotry, and white nationalism that have infected TPUSA for years.

Bucks County has a progressive future

Bucks County progressives often don't get the coverage or credit they deserve. That's about to change.