Taking the Hood Off of Anti-CRT, Prison Strike in PA, More Racism in TPUSA, U.S.-Trained Assassins Abroad, and More!
This week my column “Anti-Critical Race Theory hysteria revives McCarthyism, Klan politics” examined the historical roots of the anti-Critical Race Theory movement causing hysteria in school board meetings in Bucks County and across the country.
Ku Klux Klan meeting in Bucks County 10/23/77 at the Klavern (meeting room) in Morrisville.
I spoke with Jason Stanley, professor of philosophy at Yale and author “How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them,” to help explain this far-right movement’s roots and why it is so effective in rattling conservatives. “It’s a very familiar story and it resonates with people because it is deeply embedded in American history,” said Stanley. The column is a history lesson conservatives don’t want to hear and definitely don’t want students to learn about. Please, if you haven’t already, give it a read and share it on social media. Check it out on the Courier Times or The Intelligencer (and if you hit a paywall send me a message and I’ll email you the text.)
And check out the conversation I had with the Con OH Show's Connor OHanlon:
The State of the Nation
Solitary confinement is torture. Prisoners at the State Correctional Institution-Phoenix ended a successful hunger strike to protest the torture of long-term solitary confinement.
“We want to let our supporters know that we are transitioning from the hunger strike,” Alejandro Rodriguez-Ortiz, one of the strikers from Delaware, said in a written statement provided to the Pennsylvania Capital-Star by the Abolitionist Law Center, a group that advocates for and files litigation on behalf of incarcerated people in the state. “The whole purpose of the strike was to elucidate the manipulations of PADOC & take them out of the shadows. Now the world sees what PADOC is doing.”
PA state lawmakers Rep. Tina Davis, D-Bucks and Sen. Larry Farnese, D-Philadelphia have sponsored bills to align PA prison policies with United Nations Guidelines for the Treatment of Prisoners.
“The legislation would prohibit solitary confinement for vulnerable populations such as pregnant women, people under the age of 18, LGBTQ identifying persons, and elderly prisoners. The legislation would also limit solitary to 15 days for all other inmates.”
#ItWasGenocide. The remains of 10 Native American kids who attended the former Carlisle Indian Industrial School in PA were sent back to their relatives on Rosebud Sioux tribal lands in South Dakota.
“We want our children home no matter how long it takes,” said U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, who in June announced a nationwide investigation into the boarding schools that attempted to assimilate Indigenous children into white society.
Haaland’s followed Canada’s discovery of hundreds of unmarked graves at former residential school sites for First Nations children.
This why Defund the Police: Philly police protected members of the fascist, white nationalist group Patriot Front during their recent “Reclaim America” march through the city. However, when it came to Black Lives Matter supporting racial injustice, police indiscriminately fired tear gas, rubber bullets and pepper spray at folks. Check out Ernest Owens’ essay on the disgusting double standard at Philadelphia Magazine.
Promoting racism at Pennridge High School … One of my first columns was about Pennridge school board’s scandalous decision to allow a Turning Point USA student chapter (Is Turning Point USA a Trojan horse of right-wing extremism for Pennridge students?). As I wrote then, “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.”
Well here is another racist to add to TPUSA’s Rogues’ Gallery:
This should still be an election issue for the local school board. Ricki Chaikin wrote to me personally after my article was published to say: “Your accusations about the group itself are ridiculous … TPUSA will remain at Pennridge and very likely grow by leaps and bounds.” Like with her arguments against Critical Race Theory, facts don’t matter. Not a great lesson for students.
Beyond the U.S. Bubble
A former U.S.-trained Honduran military officer was found guilty this month over the 2016 assassination of Indigenous environmentalist Berta Cáceres in Honduras. Cáceres, winner of the Goldman prize for environmental defenders, was shot dead due to her opposition of the Agua Zarca dam. Roberto David Castillo – the former head of the dam company Desa – ordered the murder. This is a good first step, but justice is not complete yet.
In Haiti, Colombian mercenaries accused of assassinating Haitian President Jovenel Moïse also received training in the United States. “I worry about the United States being associated with or even increasing the lethal skills of military and police units around the region that are either abusive or corrupt or undemocratic, and of course that’s always been a huge risk in Colombia, given its human rights record. So it does require a lot of scrutiny to make sure that we are not associating ourselves with or improving the lethal skills of people who end up doing what we just saw in Haiti, but also people who end up doing what we just saw in Bogotá and Cali since late April,” Adam Isacson, director of the Defense Oversight program at the Washington Office on Latin America told The Intercept. A Florida “security” company, is also linked to the assassination.
Have you heard of the “School of Assassins”? The United States has a long history of providing military training to dictators, death squad members, and assassins across the Americas through the School of Americas, also known as the school of assassins, of dictators, or of coups. The Washington Post’s Dana Priest reported about what this school was teaching in 1996: “U.S. Army intelligence manuals used to train Latin American military officers at an Army school from 1982 to 1991 advocated executions, torture, blackmail and other forms of coercion against insurgents." In 2001 the Pentagon changed the name of the school to Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation because its bloody brand became too toxic. The school still trains human rights abusers to this day. To learn more about this school (which should be shut down) read The School of the Americas: Military Training and Political Violence in the Americas by Lesley Gill. You can also check out School of the Americas Watch.
Finally, watch this documentary narrated by Matin Sheen:
Thanks for reading! I look forward to your feedback and suggestions. And most importantly, keep organizing!