Zapatistas to Set Sail for Europe, White Nationalism in PA, Prison-Industrial Complex Takes a Hit, A Very MAGA Senate PA Primary, and Justice for Berta Cáceres?
Pennsylvania has a real dark underbelly. I feel like every week there is new news about white nationalism, racism, conspiracy quacks, and just general insane behavior by the state’s Republicans. One area the QAnon wing of the party is targeting is school boards. Moving forward over the next few weeks I am going to be showcasing some local progressives running for school board so that you can support them and get involved in their campaigns. Pennridge is one important race, as I’ve pointed out in my column, and they actually have a QAnon candidate endorsed by the local GOP. But all the races are important, from Bensalem to Doylestown and everywhere in between.
In the meantime, check out some stories I have been following.
State of the Nation
Republican Congressman Scott Perry is Pennsylvania’s “leading exporter of political imbecility,” according to the York Dispatch. They probably should have added white nationalism as well.
“For many Americans, what seems to be happening or what they believe right now is happening is, what appears to them is we’re replacing national-born Americans, native-born Americans to permanently transform the landscape of this very nation," Perry said during a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee hearing.
Perry was apparently sheepishly regurgitating Fox News’ Tucker Carlson’s rant on “White Replacement Theory,” which led the Anti-Defamation League to call for Carlson to be fired. ADL chief executive Jonathan A. Greenblatt said that the language by Carlson, and repeated by the York-area Republican Perry, “was not just a dog whistle to racists — it was a bullhorn.”
A “Super MAGA Trump” Republican Senate primary in PA? That’s what Politico reporter Holly Otterbein is reporting Pennsylvanians should expect. “President Trump is still very popular among Republicans,” said former GOP Rep. Lou Barletta, a top Trump ally in the state. “There’s no denying that the Republican Party in Pennsylvania is still a party of Trump.”
Barletta, also the former mayor, made a name for himself as a racist, xenophobic, white nationalist. And people like Barletta are part of Trump’s Republican base, as we saw them riot and attack the Capitol building on Jan. 6. Pennsylvania is the state with most residents arrested for their alleged roles in the insurrection.
“The way I divide it is you’ve got super-MAGA Trump, Trump-adjacent and not-so-much Trump,” Christopher Nicholas, a longtime Pennsylvania-based Republican consultant, told Politico about the likely field of candidates.
Which part of his MAGA spectrum do you think will be victorious? As a progressive, who would you rather the Democratic nominee face?
Washington bans private, for-profit prisons! Washington Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee signed the legislation Wednesday.
“Widespread civil immigration detention is one of the greatest miscarriages of justice that currently exists in our political system,” Matt Adams, legal director at the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, told the AP in an email. “The enactment of this bill is an important step towards rejecting the privatization and profiteering model of immigration detention centers that has pushed the massive expansion of immigration detention.”
One of the largest for-profit immigrant detention centers in the country, run by the GEO Group in Tacoma, would be allowed to operate until its contract expires in 2025. But that would be the last one in the state. A private detention trade association spokesperson responded cynically, if not desperately, by suggesting this was part of a campaign to “Abolish ICE.” Pathetic.
Beyond the U.S. Bubble
The Zapatistas are preparing for the “Journey for Life, European Chapter,” as delegates prepare to cross the Atlantic Ocean by boat to travel throughout the European continent to communities who invited them “to discuss our shared histories, pain, rage, successes and failures.” “Our delegates carry with them a big heart, not just to embrace those on the European continent who are in rebellion and resistance, but also to listen and learn from their histories, geographies, calendars and ways of being.”
To learn more about the Zapatistas and their inspiring revolution read:
A Spark of Hope: The Ongoing Lessons of the Zapatista Revolution 25 Years On by Hilary Klein
Zapatistas: Lessons in community self-organisation in Mexico by Anya Briy
No justice for Berta Cáceres … yet. My friend Jackie McVicar wrote an update for the NB Media Co-op on the trial against Roberto David Castillo Mejía, former military intelligence officer and executive of the hydroelectric company known as DESA. He is charged with the March 2016 assassination of the Lenca Indigenous and environmental defender Berta Cáceres, who just a year before her murder was awarded the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize. She also co-founded the National Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras. State and corporate violence has escalated in Honduras since the U.S.-backed 2009 coup (Read my 2010 article for some context: “A new president in Honduras – same old Uncle Sam”) and the country is now considered a “Narco State.” The defense team successfully petitioned for the trial to be suspended as they seek to change the judge. While Castillo’s trial is a welcome part of the struggle for justice and against impunity it doesn’t stop with him. Cáceres’ daughter “warned that the political and economic actors behind the assassination are still protected by a criminal structure.”
“He’s a key piece between the material perpetrators and the intellectual authors who continue in impunity,” said Bertha Zúniga in a virtual press conference on March 30.
Thanks for reading! I look forward to your feedback and suggestions.