Notable Women of 2016: RIP #MattieSmithColin

Mattie Smith Colin, 1918-2016

I was embarrassed to find that a notable woman of the civil rights movement, journalist Mattie Smith Colin, had to die in order for me to learn about her. This despite my having studied the civil rights movement, both its famous and also its lesser known leaders. Black parents tell their children they have to be twice as good to get half as far. Maybe they half to live twice as long, too.

Mrs. Colin lived to be 98, but her claim to fame came in 1955 with her reporting on Emmett Till, a boy who lived to only 14 before being lynched for allegedly whistling at a white woman.

Mrs. Colin wrote for the Chicago Defender, a prominent national Black newspaper:

"Oh, God, Oh God, my only boy," Mrs. Mamie (Till) Bradley wailed as five men lifted a soiled paper-wrapped bundle from a brown, wooden mid-Victorian box at the Illinois Central Station in Chicago Friday and put it into a waiting hearse.

Her reporting of Till's murder made Emmett Till internationally famous. She went on to an illustrious career as a reporter dedicated to bringing the truth, however ugly, into the open. RIP Mrs. Colin, this blog post is dedicated to you. 

Berta Cáceres, 1971-2016

Berta Isabel Cáceres Flores was assassinated by U.S.-trained special forces in her native Honduras on March 3, 2016. An environmental activist and indigenous leader, she helped found the Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras. Gunned down at age 45 for daring to organize effective defense of natural resources from the depredations of corporate greed, Cáceres was actively resisting the Agua Zarca dam project when she died.

Ben Norton reported in Salon: "Before her death, environmentalist Cáceres singled out Hillary Clinton for supporting the military coup in Honduras."

Ann Wright is a career diplomat and U.S. military veteran who resigned from her government post in 2003 in disgust over the invasion of Iraq on false pretenses. She has since devoted her time to challenging militarism in the U.S. and internationally, being arrested many times for acts of non-violent civil disobedience.

This year Ms. Wright achieved the dubious distinction of being the first (to my knowledge) political activist to have her Social Security checks withheld on the false charge of lengthy incarceration. 

She explained in Op-ed News:

On March 31, 2016, I, along with seven others, six Veterans for Peace and one Granny Peace Brigade members, was arrested at Creech drone base, Nevada as a part of the semi-annual protest against assassin drones. We spent five hours in the Clark County Jail as our arrests were processed and then were released. Our cases of being charged with "failure to disperse" were eventually dropped by the Clark County court. 

Yet, someone submitted my name and social security number to SSA as a person who has been confined in a jail since September 2016. Without any notification to me of this allegation that would disrupt for months my Social Security benefits, SSA ordered that for my "criminal conviction and confinement in a correctional institution for more than 30 days, we cannot pay your monthly Social Security payment."

The Obama administration also demanded $4,273.60 in repayment for pension payments she supposedly received in jail. I know Ann Wright and I know that she will not be deterred by this fraudulent tactic. But other seniors with a conscience may not be financially able to follow her example. Chilling, indeed.

Jan Chamberlin soared to temporary fame this year with her statement of resignation from the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Reporting that she spent several sleepless nights struggling with her conscience, the Christian soprano said she could not perform at Trump's inauguration on moral grounds. 

Ms. Chamberlin's published statement said "I could never look myself in the mirror again with self-respect" and "I only know I could never 'throw roses to Hitler.' And I certainly could never sing for him."

An online petition calling on the choir to boycott the inaugural festivities had gathered 28,525 signatures as of this morning.

LaDonna Brave Bull Allard is one of many notable Native women leading the resistance to "the Black Snake" of the Dakota Access Pipeline. Standing Rock abounds with wisdom and strength displayed by the women and girls putting their safety on the line to protect North America's largest watershed. Believing Mni Waconi "water is life" and trained as a historian, she is an official Standing Rock Sioux Tribe storyteller who keeps oral traditions alive. 

LaDonna Brave Bull Allard helped establish the Sacred Rock camp on April 1 and later connected the September 3 attack on the camp by corporate goons plus state agents of violence with the Whitestone massacre of 300 Sioux people by the U.S. Army on the same date in 1863.

Dr. Jill Stein ran for president as the Green Party candidate, barred from the "debates" and largely ignored by the corporate press. 

Besides campaigning tirelessly for a platform that upheld the values I believe in -- people's needs over corporate greed -- Dr. Stein practiced what she preached by supporting the Standing Rock water protectors in person. 

As a result, a warrant was reportedly issued for her arrest for trespassing. This while other candidates for president were not indicted for war crimes, sexual assault or fraud.

Shay Stewart-Bouley is a blogger who has contributed to my education this year. Her posts at Black Girl in Maine illuminate both the ugly face of racism and its nasty underpinnings. She writes both as an anti-racist educator and as the mother of children whose skin color exposes them to danger and abuse at every turn. Ms. Stewart-Bouley shares her own experiences of random, casual racist pronouncements and the toll they take on her energies.

She writes of her day job:

I earn my daily bread by working as the Executive Director of Community Change Inc., a 47 year old civil rights organization in Boston, MA that has been educating and organizing for racial equality since 1968 with a specific focus on the white problem.

One of the many things I've learned from reading her blog is that a donation to support the work is always in order. While many of us donate to support organizations, I don't often think to donate to bloggers whose unpaid work as citizen journalists brings us news we need and often don't get elsewhere.

There, I just made my final 2016 donation to help Black Girl in Maine endure as a valuable resource for all of us. You can, too.

Notable women abound and I could go on all day expanding on this post. Suffice it to say that when all is said and done, the courage and understanding of many wise women gave me hope that will continue into a new year.

Obama's Budget Swan Song: Quadruple Budget For U.S. Military In Europe

As liberals and so-called progressives in the U.S. duke it out over whether to nominate the candidate with the prettiest words or the prettiest bank account, their current president has released his final, lame duck budget request. Graphed above, it couldn't be more clear what the biggest priority continues to be: the Pentagon and its contractors. 

How can liberals and so-called progressives continue to support spending over half of discretionary funds on killing innocents abroad? The Obama administration dropped 23,144 bombs on Muslim civilians in 2015 alone. While still emitting pretty words on a daily basis.

As the economy tanks yet again with millions homeless, hungry or still un- and underemployed from the '08 crash, why would it be a priority to quadruple funding for U.S. weapons and military bases in Europe?

Thanks to the analysts at National Priorities Project for the pie chart above and for their examination of yet another guns over butter budget request from this "progressive" president:

The budget maintains the status quo, with more than half of discretionary funding (the funding Congress allocates each year during its budget process) reserved for the Pentagon and spending on nuclear weapons and related items. Total Pentagon and related spending in the request amounts to nearly $623 billion, including the Pentagon budget, nuclear weapons and aid to foreign militaries [my note: e.g. Israel]. The budget provides $583 billion for the Pentagon alone in 2017, a $2 billion increase over 2016. 

• A $59 billion 2017 Pentagon slush fund, or Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) funding – a fund that began as an Iraq and Afghanistan war fund and has since morphed into a Pentagon petty cash jar, and which permits the Pentagon to bust through legislated budget caps;

• Just $7.5 billion, less than two percent of the Pentagon’s total budget, for fighting ISIS, making clear that even real terrorist threats are often cynically used to secure billions in unrelated Pentagon funding;

• Quadrupled funding, or $3.4 billion, for the European Reassurance Initiative, recommitting the United States to military involvement in a conflict where our ability to make a positive difference is highly questionable.

What continues to perplex and amaze me is that the people who support Obama and who will likely support any candidate with a D after his or her name are, for the most part, educated. They've studied world history. They've examined, in high school or college, the brutal end of societies who overspent on wars of aggression while crushing dissenting voices at home.

Why can they not recognize the U.S. going down this same path again? They fall all over themselves with enthusiasm for possible future presidents with equally abysmal records on funding wars all over the planet. Most of these same people would tell you they are concerned about the environment, worried about climate change, and pessimistic about the future of commons like water, air and soil being pillaged for corporate profit.

What do they not get about the Pentagon being the biggest consumer of fossil fuels of any organization on the planet?

In the end I explain it by another history lesson, on the power of propaganda. Information management's real strength is not in selling you lies but in narrowing your vision down to a tiny peephole that blocks out most of reality. Televised sports contests are the eye candy of a sinister plot to render the populace as uninformed as possible. It is working brilliantly, for the most part.

Matt Cowan / Getty Images

I have mad respect for Beyoncé's introduction of political truth at the Super Bowl 50 halftime show this year. It's also the 50th anniversary of the Black Panthers, and in the current atmosphere of police violence without accountability that gave rise to the #BlackLivesMatter movement, that matters.

But who snuck into the Super Bowl with news that the U.S. is heating up a possible nuclear confrontation with Russia? That ISIS and al-Qaeda and the Taleban are a) supported and often funded by the U.S. and allies Saudi Arabia, Israel, Turkey and b) continue to succeed at recruiting new jihadis because you funded 23,144 opportunities for them to develop a virulent hatred of the U.S. in 2015 alone? 

I'll gird my loins now for the barrage of abuse I'll trigger by sharing news that I'll be supporting Green Party candidate Jill Stein for president. Her platform would drastically cut the Pentagon budget (in half, still not enough for my tastes, but I do support a living wage and healthcare for military personnel plus cleaning up all those toxic sites the military has created) and actually fully fund environmental stewardship, public education, and universal health care.

The liberals and "progressives" will scorn me for not choosing the "less evil" of two sides in the false dichotomy of corporate government. They will say if the demagogue with the bad hair or the one that looks like Count Dracula win, it will be my fault.

There are a lot of things I like about living in Maine, and here's one of them: we have a whopping three electoral votes. No national election is going to be determined by the voters of my state under the rigged system known as the electoral college. 

So, you can vote your conscience in Maine -- if you can still hear it calling.

Occupying The Narrative Keeps Peace Candidates On Mute, Ensures War Spending Will Roll On

Jill Stein at a fundraiser in Portland, Maine October 30, 2015.
You will not see photos of Stein with a cute baby in corporate media, so I am sharing one here. 

The American Herald Tribune published David Swanson's interview with Green Party leader and presidential candidate Jill Stein this week. In it Swanson makes the audacious claim that, since Stein's platform most closely reflects the priorities of people rather than those of corporations, she has a better chance of winning than do candidates who kiss the ring of Pentagon contractors. Because a majority of people would actually vote for the platform Stein campaigns on.

But my inbox is clogged with letters and op-eds from people who should know better who are "feeling the Bern." Liberals are again hopelessly hoping for change from the Democratic Party. Why in the face of so much evidence to the contrary do they continue to be duped?

I think it's because they still get most of their information from corporate "news" -- a zone which blacks out any reference to non-corporate sponsored candidates.

In life under corporate government, it's all about hogging the narrative. Making sure people never hear from candidates who respond intelligently to what people really want.

Because people want the military budget to stop gobbling up over half the federal budget every year. They want to stop supporting 800+ military bases around the planet. The want the wars for oil and the resulting refugee crisis and the proliferation of nuclear weapons to cease.

"Refugee crisis: Pregnant woman and children among 40 victims after boat sinks off Turkish coast"
Mirror.co.uk  Jan. 30, 2016

People don't want the future inhabitants of the White House to have a blank check for waging war on "terror" with no geographic or temporal boundaries.

People want student debt canceled, and free university education like other rich countries have. Stein has an interesting strategy here. She told Swanson:

"I have yet to find a young person in debt who doesn't become a missionary for our campaign the minute they learn that we will cancel their debt...43 million young people – that is a plurality of the vote. In a three-way race, that's enough to win the vote."

People want universal health care like other rich countries have. Stein retired from practice as a medical doctor to promote the kind of environmental policies that human health needs dictate.

Also on board: Dr. Margaret Flowers, a Green Party candidate for the Senate in Maryland and a vigorous activist on behalf of a single payer health care system. (Actually, click here to read the article.)

People want the government to respond to climate crisis rather than continuing to pump out carbon and other pollutants at the taxpayers' expense.

People want to have a say in whether or not to live under corporate global government instead of having it shoved down their throats by fast tracking the Trans-Pacific Partnership deal through Congress.

From Black Agenda Report "Ethnic Cleansing: The Ultimate Environmental Racism" by Glen Ford

People want clean food and water, and real information in order to know if they are poisoning their own children unwittingly.

People want police accountability and an end to extrajudicial killing by guns at home and air strikes abroad.

People want the government to help poor families fleeing the murderous policies engendered in Central America by CAFTA and torturers trained at the taxpayer-supported School of the Americas. People don't want migrant children handed over to human traffickers after being housed in concentration camp-like conditions for weeks or months on end.

But even more than all these things, people want to believe in something. Anything that might pull us back from the precipice. Don't think corporate media doesn't recognize this. It's very important to manage this profound need of mobs in times of crisis.

That's why the demagogue with the bad hair appeals to so many frightened working class voters. They see enormous structural problems with our system as it stands, but they also have a compelling need to blame it on someone else. It couldn't be their fault, because they feel like victims themselves. They've lost faith in corporate government and most corporate media. Only "news" outlets that broadcast scapegoats appeal to them now.

Their news feed will make sure they never hear of Dr. Jill Stein or Dr. Margaret Flowers. How about yours?

Green Party Prez Hopeful Dr. Jill Stein On Voting For The Lesser Of Two Evils: "Are You Making Excuses For Your Abuser?"

Dr. Jill Stein speaking in Portland, Maine on October 30, 2016:
"Supporting people, planet and peace over profits is not a fringe belief."

Campaigning under the Green Party slogan Forget the lesser evil -- it's time to fight for the common good Dr. Jill Stein held a fundraising event in Portland, Maine on October 30. Dr. Stein is running for president because, as she explained in a detailed critique of the Obama administration, "voting for the lesser of two evils has a track record that's not good."

Dr. Stein was joined by local Green Party candidates Paul Okot (left) for school board and Dave Foster (right) for city council.

Dr. Stein described herself as a sort of "political therapist" who helps people break up abusive political relationships. She noted that many of us may need to gently ask our friends, "Are you making excuses for your abuser?"

Control of debates , public opinion polls, and the press were topics she touched on before describing her commitment to end endless wars in favor of spending on things people really want: sustainable energy, universal access to health care, free higher education, and the elimination of student debt. Thanks to Brian Leonard for this video of Dr. Stein's full remarks, well worth a listen:

  

Also on hand: Sherri Mitchell, a hard-hitting attorney for environmental
protection in our state, and Bob Klotz of 350 Maine.

Sherri Mitchell, a Penboscot attorney,  opened a space for Jill's remarks by offering a blessing for the land and ancestors of Wabanaki people. She also noted later in the evening that theft of the land from indigenous people is an original violation of law underpinning our current system of government. She urged the candidate to acknowledge this fundamental concern of indigenous people as a basis for examining the proper role of government.

Future generations deserve a government that protects the planet for all forms of life.