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Just imagine! The words are those of Robert Weissman, president of the organization Public Citizen, in response to the legislative efforts of Reps. Barbara Lee and Mark Pocan, who are the co-chairs of glory hallelujah! the Defense Spending Reduction Caucus. They recently introduced legislation that would cut Pentagon spending by $100 billion and divert the money to programs that actually helped the country . . . e.g., universal health care, ending child poverty, saving the environment.

Yeah, just imagine. One can also quickly, unavoidably imagine the cynicism that rushes in whenever someone tosses out the word peace. Then its all pushed to the margins, both political and social, as America continues its business as usual, which is all about protecting itself from enemies (most of whom it creates). The sales pitch is fear. The motive, hidden in the shadows, is extraordinary profit for some.

The problem begins with the words themselves, which turn two complex, infinitely different enterprises war and peace into two items on a knick-knack shelf . . .a plastic G.I. Joe, lets say, and a cute little angel. Thats the essence of the American debate about what matters and what it should do with its wealth. The debate is cynicism-fueled and simplistic, reducing peace, in particular, to a weaklings counterpart to war. When the focus is on war, you always know what to do next. Say the wrong guy (Joe Biden, for instance), gets elected president:

We will have to do a bloody, massively bloody revolution against them. Thats whats going to have to happen.

The speaker is the currently incarcerated Elmer Stewart Rhodes, founder of the Oath Keepers, who, of course, played a major role in the Jan. 6 insurrection. His words are both stunning and completely ho-hum normal. Declare an enemy, then kill it. What about that do you not understand?

The thing is, this attitude isnt just rightwing nutballicosity. This is red, white and blue, mission accomplished, ever-increasing-defense-budget America. Just imagine for once if we led the world in funding peace and not wars. Everybody knows this is virtually impossible to imagine beyond the realm of the fairytale. What would that even mean? Funding peace, creating peace this is deeply complex, and too many Americans, certainly too many of those in leadership positions, dont have time for complexity.

How, for instance, do we deal with all those inconvenient mass shootings, at schools, shopping malls, churches, etc.? Gun control isnt the answer because people need access to assault rifles and such in America we have the freedom to protect ourselves (just ask George Zimmerman).

The guys who do those mass shootings are lone wolves and usually mentally ill, so we need to amp up our mental health efforts, which, mind you, doesnt actually mean funding mental health programs (the Pentagon needs that money). Is there another option?

The aftermath of the attack also unleashed a call by several prominent Republicans to arm teachers, according to Common Dreams.

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And to that end, Ohios Republican governor, Mike DeWine, recently signed a bill permitting teachers to carry a gun to class after just 24 hours of firearms training. This is down from the 700 hours of training previously required of school personnel. What could possibly go wrong with that?

A madness has taken hold, tweeted the NAACPs Sherrilyn Ifill.

That seems to be the case or so it seems beyond the world of guns and violence and easy solutions. In his book The Powers That Be, Walter Wink talks about the myth of redemptive violence: the belief that violence saves us. Indeed, It doesnt seem to be mythic in the least, he wrote:

Violence simply appears to be in the nature of things. Its what works. It seems inevitable, the last and, often, the first resort in conflicts. If a god is what you turn to when all else fails, violence certainly functions as a god.

This is a helluva god to worship and obey. Here are some stats: In 2020, the most recent year that data is available, 45,222 people in the United States were killed by guns. Nearly 53 people are killed by guns every day.

And across the various oceans, at least a million people have died in recent American wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen and other countries. And, oh yeah, more than 30,000 American veterans have committed suicide in the wake of those wars, according to the Costs of War Project, seeming to indicate that the god of redemptive violence isnt the only one we worship. For many people, another God appears in the wake of war and violence, especially when someone is all alone with himself/herself. Suddenly lives lost lives may start to matter.

Wasteful defense spending does not make our communities safer it only weakens our ability to respond to crises, said Congresswoman Lee.

Shes referring, of course, to complex responses: providing food and health care for the hungry, the ill; addressing the deep causes of crime and social instability; listening to people and healing wounds rather than being content with punishment and armed self-defense; allowing our empathy to transcend national borders; rethinking our relationship with Planet Earth and placing our priorities on sustaining rather than exploiting it.

Just imagine for once if we led the world in funding peace and not wars.

Crossposted fromPeaceVoice

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War Profiteering Benefits a Few But Hurts Most of Us - LA Progressive

"Just imagine for once if we led the world in funding peace and not wars."

Just imagine! The words are those of Robert Weissman, president of the organization Public Citizen, in response to the legislative efforts of Reps. Barbara Lee and Mark Pocan, who are the co-chairs ofglory hallelujah!the Defense Spending Reduction Caucus. They recently introduced legislation that would cut Pentagon spending by $100 billion and divert the money to programs that actually helped the country . . . e.g., universal health care, ending child poverty, saving the environment.

"Just imagine for once if we led the world in funding peace and not wars."

Yeah, just imagine. One can also quickly, unavoidably imagine the cynicism that rushes in whenever someone tosses out the word "peace." Then it's all pushed to the margins, both political and social, as America continues its business as usual, which is all about protecting itself from enemies (most of whom it creates). The sales pitch is fear. The motive, hidden in the shadows, is extraordinary profit for some.

The problem begins with the words themselves, which turn two complex, infinitely different enterpriseswar and peaceinto two items on a knick-knack shelf . . .a plastic G.I. Joe, let's say, and a cute little angel. That's the essence of the American "debate" about what matters and what it should do with its wealth. The debate is cynicism-fueled and simplistic, reducing "peace," in particular, to a weakling's counterpart to war. When the focus is on war, you always know what to do next. Say the wrong guy (Joe Biden, for instance), gets elected president:

"We will have to do a bloody, massively bloody revolution against them. That's what's going to have to happen."

The speaker is the currently incarcerated Elmer Stewart Rhodes, founder of the Oath Keepers, who, of course, played a major role in the Jan. 6 insurrection. His words are both stunning and completely ho-hum "normal." Declare an enemy, then kill it. What about that do you not understand?

The thing is, this attitude isn't just rightwing nutballicosity. This is red, white and blue, "mission accomplished," ever-increasing-defense-budget America. "Just imagine for once if we led the world in funding peace and not wars." Everybody knows this is virtually impossible to imagine beyond the realm of the fairytale. What would that even mean? Funding peace, creating peacethis is deeply complex, and too many Americans, certainly too many of those in leadership positions, don't have time for complexity.

How, for instance, do we deal with all those inconvenient mass shootings, at schools, shopping malls, churches, etc.? Gun control isn't the answer because people need access to assault rifles and suchin America we have the freedom to protect ourselves (just ask George Zimmerman). The guys who do those mass shootings are lone wolves and usually mentally ill, so we need to amp up our mental health efforts, which, mind you, doesn't actually mean funding mental health programs (the Pentagon needs that money). Is there another option?

"The aftermath of the attack also unleashed a call by several prominent Republicans to arm teachers.," according to Common Dreams.

And to that end, Ohio's Republican governor, Mike DeWine, recently signed a bill "permitting teachers to carry a gun to class after just 24 hours of firearms training." This is down from the 700 hours of training previously required of school personnel. What could possibly go wrong with that?

"A madness has taken hold," tweeted the NAACP's Sherrilyn Ifill.

That seems to be the caseor so it seems beyond the world of guns and violence and easy solutions. In his book The Powers That Be, Walter Wink talks about "the myth of redemptive violence": the belief that violence saves us. Indeed, "It doesn't seem to be mythic in the least," he wrote. "Violence simply appears to be in the nature of things. It's what works. It seems inevitable, the last and, often, the first resort in conflicts. If a god is what you turn to when all else fails, violence certainly functions as a god."

This is a helluva god to worship and obey. Here are some stats: In 2020, the most recent year that data is available, 45,222 people in the United States were killed by guns. Nearly 53 people are killed by guns every day.

And across the various oceans, at least a million people have died in recent American warsin Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen and other countries. And, oh yeah, more than 30,000 American veterans have committed suicide in the wake of those wars, according to the Costs of War Project, seeming to indicate that the god of redemptive violence isn't the only one we worship. For many people, another God appears in the wake of war and violence, especially when someone is all alone with himself/herself. Suddenly liveslost livesmay start to matter.

"Wasteful defense spending does not make our communities saferit only weakens our ability to respond to crises," said Congresswoman Lee.

She's referring, of course, to complex responses: providing food and health care for the hungry, the ill; addressing the deep causes of crime and social instability; listening to people and healing wounds rather than being content with punishment and armed self-defense; allowing our empathy to transcend national borders; rethinking our relationship with Planet Earth and placing our priorities on sustaining rather than exploiting it.

"Just imagine for once if we led the world in funding peace and not wars."

See the original post:
Opinion | Embracing the Complexity of Peace | Robert C. Koehler - Common Dreams

Two white men in Florida, in the same town where Trayvon Martin was killed by George Zimmerman, have been arrested on felony charges.

The pair were apprehended after they harassed and racially profiled a 16-year-old teenage Black boy and also threw a rock through his car window, according to Heavy.

The two white men, Donald Eugene Corsi and Howard Oral Hughes reside in Sanford, Florida, which is the same city where 17-year-old Martin was assaulted before being shot and killed by Zimmerman in 2012.

The victim posted a video of the incident on his Instagram account which shows the two white men verbally assaulting him as a white woman, who was also filming, yells out, Get out of this neighborhood. You dont belong here.

I was racially profiled while driving through my friends neighborhood. They didnt like the way I was driving, so they felt the need to hit my car with a cone, and throw a rock through my window. All I wanted to do wasde-escalate until police came, because I wasnt about to get charges pressed on me for no reason .

The victims father said that the police were called to the scene but did not immediately arrest the two white men. Seminole County court records show that Corsi, 52, and Hughes, 61 were later taken into custody.

Corsi was charged with weapon offenses saying that he sent a missile into a vehicle, which is a second-degree felony. They both were charged with criminal mischief, being accused of causing more than $1,000 in damages to property, which amounts to a third-degree felony. Hughes was also charged with first-degree misdemeanor battery (touch or strike). The two men were released from the Seminole County jail after posting bond.

Hughes was released after posting $2,500 bail, while Corsi was released after he posted a $17,000 bond. The scheduled court date for the pair is on Aug. 16 for their arraignments.

Corsi could face up to 15 years in prison if he is found guilty of the second-degree felony weapons offense as well as a fine and probation.

On the third-degree felony charge, Hughes and Corsi are looking at up to five years in Florida state prison plus fines and probation. Hughes was also charged with a misdemeanor that carries a potential sentence of up to one year in jail.

More:
Two White Men Arrested For Threatening Black Teen, Throwing a Rock In His Car In Same Town Trayvon Martin Was - Black Enterprise

The Center Square claims to be a news wire service that was founded to fulfill the need for high-quality statehouse and statewide news with a taxpayer sensibility. In reality, its just the latest iteration of an existing propaganda machine that dresses up a biased conservative spin as reliable news. And some local news outlets around the country are distributing its propaganda.

In 2019, conservative news site Watchdog.org reinvented itself as a wire service, called The Center Square. The Center Square claims to produce the highest quality of news coverage and investigative work and provides its content for free to other media outlets. But in reality, The Center Square publishes misleading stories with a heavy right-wing bent. As Watchdog.org, the organization was known for propagating misinformation andlies that benefited Republican politicians.

The Center Square receives funding from right-wing sources through dark money groups. The organization is largely funded by the ultra-conservative billionaire Koch family through the dark-money group Donors Trust, which provides money to The Center Squares publisher, the Franklin News Foundation (previously known as the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity).

Along with its affiliates, The Center Square helps promote right-wing legislative priorities. The Franklin News Foundation is listed as an associate of the conservative State Policy Network and its affiliates sometimes publish content promoting the agenda of the American Legislative Education Council (ALEC), which pushes right-wing legislation in state government. Some of the policies ALEC has promoted include legislation to end paid sick leave, laws that halt Medicaid expansion for low-income residents, and the infamous Stand Your Ground law in Florida that George Zimmerman used to justify killing unarmed minor Trayvon Martin in 2012.

Targeting local news is a cunning strategy for The Center Square, as polls show Americans trust local news over national media. By offering its so-called wire stories at no cost, The Center Square is taking advantage of local media, at a time when many local news outlets are underfunded and struggling,to launder its far-right perspectives and present them as legitimate news stories. Some local media have fallen for the scheme, republishing Center Square content that often twists the truth, parrots right-wing talking points, and excludes left-leaning perspectives.

Here are some recent examples of how The Center Squares conservative propaganda has worked its way into media outlets across the U.S.:

Read the original post:
A dark money-fueled conservative group rebranded its effort to infiltrate local politics and local media outlets are falling for it - Media Matters...

By Patrick Washington, Word in Black

The Texas-birthed holiday of Juneteenth is a very interesting holiday, to say the least. See, I, a native-born Texan, have two Yankee parents. As such, Ive been able to hear both sides of the idea of Juneteenth and now, I am at a final resting place for my attitude about this new celebration of what used to be a regional observance.

Im ok with it.

Let me explain; I love the idea of Juneteenth. Its simple to me.The Civil War ended, White folks were trippin, the army had to come in, let everybody know whats up. Easy right? I thought so toobut then the other side came in.

Now, for the sake of fairness, I do get some of the opposition that was very prevalent in my younger days. Its kind of strange to celebrate the late arrival of emancipation, however, I also didnt understand why others cared so much when this wasnt a national thing. It was for us Texans. Then an elder of mine stated plainly, They dont like that we celebrate our freedom, because they dont celebrate theirs. And never have. But will celebrate the fourth of July like it meant something. And there it was: clarity. The line had been drawn in the sand and I now stood firmly on the side of Juneteenth.

I admit I never understood why other Black communities had no observance of their freedom. I figured someone heard about the Emancipation Proclamation and said thats a good day to light up a barbecue and shoot up some fireworks, but no. Even a simple observance of Black liberation would be cool, right? Butno.

So, I carried on quietly eating my ribs and finding some strawberries to munch on (Im not a watermelon fan, so I kept it 19th with another red fruit). Then something happened. I met someone who would eventually become a close friend from upstate New York; Syracuse to be exact. At some point, we were talking, and I mentioned Juneteenth and she said, yeah, I havent celebrated that since I left home.

You know I the native-born Texan was confused. How couldwhy would a New Yorker know anything about Juneteenth? As curious as a cat, I probed for everything she knew about MY holiday, and to my surprise she got it all right! She told me that there were observances in small places all the time, and they were often met with the same disdain as I was familiar with when it came to outsiders learning about Juneteenth.

Still, at that point, I couldnt care less. I was far too excited to have a friend to silence the haters who didnt have a country accent. It was glorious. And we both were soldiers in the army of Juneteenth laying tongue thrashings to haters at the drop of a dime.

Then, in late February 2012, George Zimmerman killed Trayvon Martin and the world changed. For years, the Black community had endured a seemingly unending display of Black bodies murdered by police with no accountability or consequence. Now, here was this civilian, with a far more extensive criminal background than the child hed literally stalked against police orders before instigating contact with and killing him, being given the same hand-waving latitude as police officers, while social media exploded with concentrated efforts to dehumanize the victim.

Call it the first moments of the resurgence of the Civil Rights Movement, and the global awareness campaign that would become Black Lives Matter. Everything had changed, but not really. It was still business as usual but something else was there. An underlying tone was getting louder. A fervor that was just under the surface ready to explode, and we all knew it was coming.

The next few years, things just grew more and more tense. During that whole time, we still celebrated Juneteenth. More Black celebrities were talking about it; I saw Usher wear a shirt on stage X-ing out the Fourth of July and underlining Juneteenth. Cool. I look up and folks in California are explaining to the internet the importance of Juneteenth.

What the hell is happening? I called my friend; she already knew. We lamented, asked whats the deal with this, laughed, and casually dismissed the fair weather freedom lovers for what we thought was, at best, a momentary interest.

Thankfully, we were wrong, but I still had a few lingering reservations. After all, my mother told me about growing up in the 1960s and watching all her peers rock afros and Afrocentric garments, but by the mid-70s to early-80s she said, Most of them negroes went back to perms and tight fades to appease white folks to get jobs in the corporate sector.

I couldnt deny that, nor could I separate how humans use trends in horrible situations to feel better about what we feel we cant control. Id be lying if I said that didnt sit at the top of my thought process when bringing up Juneteenth with certain people.

And then there was George Floyd. The chillingly silent explosion we had all been waiting for. That tragic, horrific, damn near 9-minute bomb that blew up in our faces as we just watched. Say what you want, but we all watched. For whatever reason, we watched. We saw that clock ticking, and we watched. We heard that fear, and we watched. BOOM. The whole world heard that explosion, but this time, the world was not turning away.

For a while, the planet was engulfed in conversation about Black lives. Not only through marches, but also via dialogue, history lessons, context, perspectives, think pieces, andwait for it, Juneteenth. Yep, right there in the middle of all this turmoil, were groups of people talking about Juneteenth.

To be fair, Juneteenth occurred that year as usual, however, at that time, I was feeling like, oh, it just takes slavery, Jim Crow, civil right movement, black power movement, hip hop, countless black people killed by the police and a global protest to get Black people to recognize thisgreat. Looking back, I think I was just upset that thats the norm for things like this.

My mother-in-law blames it on socialization. According to her, Americans are not wired to learn lessons easily. It takes a lot, but once we move the needle, it tends to stay moved. Today there are national talks about Juneteenth, as well as different states recognizing the date as important in the history and context of the USAs racial past.

I was still having reservations about supporting this, but like most things in my life, an elder spoke to me. Saying mostly better late than never, but also re-affirming what I already knew to be true. This isnt about white folks not letting us go free. It aint about Black folks not knowing about the end of the war, nor not being given anything.

Juneteenth is about us.

Its about us recognizing our inherent liberty and freedom. The thing is, when did any enslaved person truly know they were free? Hell, Malcolm X was talking about the mentally enslaved DURING the Civil Rights Movement. When were the shackles truly taken off? And did they stay off? What reminds you of not slipping back into a place of subjugation? No need to guess, Ill tell you; Its a ritual. A ceremony that takes all that and puts it in its place. I took for granted that I was born in a place where that was the norm, and others were just now waking up to the idea that we deserve a day of recognition that are NOT slaves. Who celebrates that? We do.

In the words of the illustrious Charles ONeil, Chairman, Board of Directors at U.S. Black Chambers, Inc, Apparently there was NO party before Juneteenthwhat emancipation date is commemorated in SC, AL, GA, TN, KY, MS, LA, AR, VA, NC? Juneteenth mighta been late, but there was no party til Texas got there! Its a point of pride really. Through all this weve been telling yall we free! Late sure, messed up, yes, but were here EVERY YEAR, doing our most to enjoy us, to celebrate us.

So, welcome! Pull up a seat, pour some fresh prepared strawberry soda, slice a watermelon, and inhale the sweet smells from the grill, cuz we are all free. Free to be who we want and who we are now and forever.

We now understand our foundational influence on this place. Our ownership of its history and our roles in making sure that it never reverts. Were in it now, like yesterday never left. Voter suppression efforts like its still the Jim Crow era, law enforcement still acting like slave catchers, and racists in power doing their best to keep it.

But we have Juneteenth. Not just the day, but also the attitude, the philosophy, the ideal. Its ours.

I do not know what the future holds, clich as that is, but I can be sure of a one thing this year. On the 19th of June, the United States of Americas African population will be as unified as ever, and I cant see that going away. Im thankful for that. I appreciate that, and I will allow that to melt away the younger sentiments I had towards my fellow Black folks whom I welcome with open arms into this new head space.

Just dont forget where it comes from: TEXAS BABY!

Patrick Washington is the second-generation CEO and publisher of The Dallas Weekly which has been serving the Black community of the 4th largest metroplex in the nation since 1954.

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#WordinBlack: Texas native son talks Juneteenth: better late than never - Afro American