Chris Hedges's Blog, page 15

Joe Biden Scores Major Victory in South Carolina Primary

Joe Biden scored a thundering victory Saturday in South Carolina’s Democratic primary on the strength of African American support, a decisive win that could force moderate rivals out of the race and blunt the rise of progressive leader Bernie Sanders.

Biden’s win came at a perilous moment in his 2020 bid as he needed an emphatic rebound after underwhelming performances this month in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada. The race now pivots to the 14 states from Maine to California that vote on Tuesday in what effect will be a national primary.

“We are very much alive,” Biden declared at an exuberant post-election rally. “For all of you who have been knocked down, counted out, left behind — this is your campaign.”

Sanders claimed a distant second place, a loss that gave a momentary respite to anxious Democrats who feared that the democratic socialist would finish February with four consecutive top finishes that would make it difficult for anyone to overtake him.

The Associated Press declared Biden the winner just after the polls closed in South Carolina. The AP based the call on data from AP VoteCast, a survey of the electorate conducted for the AP by NORC at the University of Chicago. The survey showed a convincing win for Biden.

Even with the victory, the shortcomings of Biden’s campaign remain, including a lack of robust funding and organization, and he will face for the first time Mike Bloomberg, a billionaire who has spent more than $500 million advertising in the Super Tuesday states. Bloomberg announced his own plan to deliver a three-minute prime-time address Sunday night on two television networks. He didn’t say how much he paid for the air time, which is unprecedented in recent decades.

Biden is barely running any television advertising in Super Tuesday states. And both Sanders and Bloomberg have many more staff and volunteers.

But Biden is making an aggressive round of media appearances on Sunday in an effort to counter Bloomberg’s massive spending. He’s also working to secure endorsements from prominent Democrats and, shortly after the Saturday results were in, former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe backed Biden.

The South Carolina primary was the first major test of the candidates’ appeal among black voters. That courtship will continue on Sunday when many of the White House hopefuls travel to Selma, Alabama, to participate in ceremonies commemorating civil rights heroism.

A number of states that vote on Super Tuesday, including Alabama, Tennessee, North Carolina and Virginia, have substantial black populations.

One of the candidates who spent recent weeks wooing black voters, billionaire activist Tom Steyer, ended his campaign on Saturday after a disappointing third place finish. He spent more than $24 million on television advertising in South Carolina — more than all of his rivals combined — but never found a clear lane in the crowded contest.

Seven candidates remain in the Democrats’ quest to find the strongest possible nominee to take on President Donald Trump in November. They spent Saturday assessing the impact of Biden’s win.

Aides to Bloomberg’s campaign said they still believe the former New York mayor can win in a handful of states that vote on Super Tuesday, including Arkansas, Alabama, Oklahoma, Virginia and North Carolina.

And Sanders was already looking ahead to the next contests as well, betting he can amass an insurmountable delegate lead. After two consecutive victories and a tie for the lead in Iowa, the 78-year-old Vermont senator’s confidence has surged.

Sanders congratulated Biden on his first win and said it was nothing for his own supporters to worry about.

“That will not be the only defeat. A lot of states in this country. Nobody wins them all,” he told a cheering crowd in Virginia. “Now we enter Super Tuesday.”

Pressure is building on lower performing candidates including former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren to justify staying in the race. None gave any indication on Saturday that they would exit before Tuesday.

Through four contests, Sanders has a healthy, but shrinking, delegate lead.

The AP has allocated at least 54 delegates to Sanders with a few more expected as South Carolina’s remaining votes dribble in. Biden vaulted past Buttigieg into second place with at least 44 delegates and he’s likely to get several more. Buttigieg, Warren and Klobuchar remain stuck at 26, eight and seven, respectively.

Trump was paying close attention to the Democratic race.

Speaking before conservative activists earlier in the day, the president conducted a poll of sorts by asking his audience to cheer for who would be the best Democratic contender for him to face in November.

Sanders was the clear winner.

“How could you be easier to beat than Joe? That guy can’t put two sentences together,” Trump told attendees of the Conservative Political Action Conference in suburban Washington. “But you know he is more down the middle. Everyone knows he’s not a communist and with Bernie there a real question about that.”

But Saturday was all about Biden and whether he might convince anxious establishment Democrats to rally behind him at last.

Elected officials inclined to embrace his moderate politics had been reluctant to support him after bad finishes in Iowa and New Hampshire and a distant second place in Nevada last week. Yet fearing Sanders’ polarizing progressive priorities, they’re still searching for an alternative who’s viewed as a safer bet to defeat Trump in November.

Biden won 63% of the votes cast by African Americans. He also did well with older voters, women, moderates and conservatives and regular churchgoers, according to AP VoteCast.

Sanders earned the support of 14% of African American voters, while billionaire businessman Tom Steyer won 15%.

There was also evidence that Biden’s status as former President Barack Obama’s two-term vice president helped him win over African Americans.

VoteCast found that 45% voters in South Carolina wanted to return to the politics of the past, compared to about a third in Iowa and New Hampshire. That includes the 51% of African American voters who said they want a Democratic presidential nominee who would emulate the Obama presidency.

Democratic National Committee Chair Tom Perez cautioned Democrats that it’s still early in their presidential primary.

Speaking at a North Carolina Democratic Party fundraising gala, Perez noted that to win the nomination, a Democrat must win 1,991 delegates — and only a fraction of those have been allocated in the party’s first four primaries.

“We have a long way to go,” he said.

___

Peoples reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Brian Slodysko, Will Weissert and Seth Borenstein in Washington, Thomas Beaumont in Columbia and Charleston, South Carolina and Alexandra Jaffe in Charlotte, North Carolina, contributed to this report.

With $46 Million February Haul, Bernie Sanders Breaks a Fundraising Record

Again bolstering the argument that its grassroots and movement-building campaign is unique in the 2020 primary field, the campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders announced Sunday morning that it raised a record-setting $46 million in the month a February—by far the most of any Democrat so far.

“The senator’s multigenerational, multiracial working class coalition keeps fueling his campaign for transformational change a few bucks at a time,” said Faiz Shakir, Sanders’ campaign manager, in a statement. “We’re especially proud that of the more than 2 million donations we received this month, over 1.4 million were from voters in states that vote on Super Tuesday.”

According to the campaign, it was able to raise $4.5 million on the Saturday alone, even as it suffered its first primary defeat in South Carolina to Joe Biden. “You can’t win them all,” Sanders said at a rally Saturday night after the results came in.

In an email to supporters on Sunday, Sanders said: “This is a campaign FOR the working people of this country powered BY the working people of this country.  While other campaigns have their super PACs and their billionaire donors, or are billionaires themselves, we have something they do not have—and that is people. Lots and lots of people.”

As The Hill reports:

The haul, which came during a month in which Sanders cemented himself as the front-runner to win the Democratic nomination, represents the best fundraising month of Sanders’ campaign. The previous high came in January, when the campaign reeled in $25 million from more than 648,000 people. In total, Sanders has raised more than $167 million, far outpacing the other Democratic candidates.

Of the total  2.2 million individual donations that came in during the month—including more than 350,000 first-time donors—over half of those came from voters linvging in Super Tuesday states and the overall average contribution was $21. Campaign strategist Tim Tagaris tweeted:

YOU are proving we can have a president who doesn’t need to beg the powerful for money. That is revolutionary. @BernieSanders February

Herbert Marcuse’s Philosophy of Liberation

“Herbert Marcuse, Philosopher of Utopia: a Graphic Biography”
Purchase in the Truthdig Bazaar

Herbert Marcuse (1898-1979) is the greatest but largely unknown philosopher of the mid-20th century. When I mention him in my UCLA classes today, almost no one recognizes the references. Yet when I began teaching in the late 1960s, he was a major staple of my work. For several years, at UC Berkeley, I assigned and taught “One-Dimensional Man, An Essay on Liberation, Eros and Civilization,” and “Repressive Tolerance.” These course readings were well received and generated robust, often animated discussion. These assignments and reading lists were less well received by my more conservative faculty superiors­—all likely liberal Democrats—who disliked and feared the ongoing student rebellions on the Berkeley campus and throughout the nation.

I also had the distinct pleasure of meeting Marcuse in person a few times when he visited Berkeley, and I had a limited correspondence with him when he taught at UC San Diego. Marcuse remains a powerful influence in my present intellectual pursuits. Along with the writings of C. Wright Mills, he helped form the intellectual foundation of much of my teaching over the years. That contact, however brief, was invaluable.

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The new graphic biography, “Herbert Marcuse: Philosopher of Utopia,” illustrated by Nick Thorkelson, edited by Paul Buhle and Andrew T. Lamas, and with a foreword by Angela Y. Davis, may herald a Marcuse revival. Buhle and Lamas add enormous scholarly depth to this project. Its pictorial character is appealing to younger readers, and its biographical accuracy, philosophical sophistication, historical acuity, and incisive observations and commentary about Marcuse’s social and political analyses make the volume equally attractive to scholars and educated laypersons.

But for me, the book succeeded mightily because it catalyzed my extensive return to Marcuse’s texts, which I had only glanced (embarrassingly) fleetingly at more recently. It proved to be an enormous pleasure, for example, to look closely again at various parts of “One-Dimensional Man.” I was reminded of how perceptive Marcuse was in addressing the life-negating consequences of rampant consumption, the manipulation of needs by vested corporate interests, and the consummate delusions of “liberty” in a sophisticated scheme of totalitarianism for the “affluent.” He wrote this while recognizing at the same time that millions of marginalized residents are brutally kept in line, which led him to identify with the growing African American freedom struggle in the 1960s, and, by extension, the struggles of oppressed peoples throughout the world.

The early parts of this engaging graphic biography are a remarkable fusion of Marcuse’s life with his philosophical development set against the tumultuous historical development of early 20th century Europe. It chronicles his early studies with Martin Heidegger, his prominence in the iconic Frankfurt School of Critical Theory, and his necessary flight as a Jew from the growing threat of Nazi rule in his native Germany. Marcuse joined a large and distinguished number of intellectuals, artists, and others who fled Nazi tyranny, finding refuge in the United States and elsewhere during those horrific times.

Nick Thorkelson’s drawings add enormously to this narrative. He is a longtime graphic artist with a distinguished record of illustration, especially on radical and labor topics. He shows how effectively this medium can convey complex ideas in a thoroughly intriguing way.

Students and others interested in philosophy and intellectual history should be especially engaged after seeing and reading here about the Frankfurt School and its key figures. Marcuse’s early encounters with Hegel, Kant, Goethe, Freud, Mann, Heidegger, Marx, and other major philosophical and literary figures led him to the Frankfurt School. The book also notes such intellectual luminaries as Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, Frederick Pollock, Erich Fromm, Otto Kirchheimer, Leo Lowenthal and Franz Neumann. Obviously, a graphic biography of Herbert Marcuse cannot address the philosophical and theoretical ideas of all these thinkers in any depth, but it can and does catalyze intellectual curiosity. It encourages readers to explore the vast literature that is widely available.

Marcuse’s intellectual and political journey in America is likely to interest most readers of “Herbert Marcuse: Philosopher of Utopia.” The book deals with his personal struggles, his academic trajectory, especially his work at Brandeis University, and his growing stature as a political and public intellectual. One of his star students at Brandeis was Angela Davis, who came to realize, with Marcuse’s model and early encouragement, that it would be possible to be an academic, an activist, and a scholar. Her subsequent career validated his faith in her multifaceted talents.

The book reveals how Marcuse’s increasing political visibility during the 1960s caused Brandeis’ leaders and donors to turn against him—an all too common reaction against leftist academics and others. In 1964, he published “One-Dimensional Man,” a powerful and scathing indictment of modern society, especially American society and political economy. This is Marcuse’s most influential book, and if Thorkelson’s graphic biography accomplishes nothing else, it should stimulate readers to either look at it for the first time or return to it in the perilous era of the early 21st century.

Thorkelson does an impressive job of summarizing “One-Dimensional Man.” As I tried to show my Berkeley students many decades ago, its main theme is submission to a sophisticated capitalist scheme that demands and almost entirely ensures that people “recognize themselves in their commodities; they find their soul in their automobile, hi-fi set, split-level home, kitchen equipment.” The only thing that has changed since 1964 is the growing level of capitalist sophistication and domination. Today the products are electronic, including dazzling computers, addictive smartphones, and many other forms of consumerist social controls that reinforce corporate hegemony; these are products that Marcuse could never have imagined more than a half century ago, but the deeper reality of human alienation is identical. This is what made Marcuse the subtlest and most perceptive Marxist critic of his time.

In “One-Dimensional Man,” Marcuse revealed the fundamental truth of modern Western capitalism: “Under the rule of a repressive whole, liberty can be made into a powerful instrument of domination… . Free election of masters does not abolish the masters or the slaves. Free choice among a wide variety of goods and services does not signify freedom if these goods and services sustain social controls over a life of toil and fear—that is, if they sustain alienation.” It does not matter at all whether millions of people recognize their alienation, often blissfully unaware that their “needs” are not their own but merely produced through their superficially pleasant submission. The corporate state continues largely unchallenged.

Thorkelson also shows how Marcuse was no armchair theorist. He identified openly and publicly with the resistance movement in the United States and throughout the word, making him “The Reluctant Guru,” as the volume indicates. As he wrote, millions of human beings left out of the Affluent Society were kept in line “by a brutality which revives medieval and early modern practices.” These words from 1964 resonate eerily in the present, especially when police misconduct and killings of people of color have become all too commonplace.

Marcuse was outspoken in supporting African Americans, students and other protesters, and in opposing the Vietnam War. By then, he had moved to UC San Diego, a city well known for its conservatism. He attracted considerable hostile attention, including from the American Legion, the Ku Klux Klan, Gov. Ronald Reagan, Vice President Spiro Agnew, actor John Wayne, and other right-wing forces and people. The book shows how he was even forced to go into hiding during those times, a victim of the reactionary responses to the black, student, and other movements sweeping the globe and Marcuse’s unwavering support for them.

More unnerving to him was the increasing animosity from his former Frankfurt School friends and colleagues. Adorno especially took issue with Marcuse’s opposition to the Vietnam War and his support of the worldwide student movement. Adorno, in some respects the model of the paternalistic German university professor, was subject in postwar Germany to derision by left-wing students. In one case, in 1969, women students interrupted his classroom by baring their breasts and showering him with flowers, which Thorkelson draws in an amusing panel in the book. Some of the cordial correspondence between the old comrades is also reprinted, and shows dramatically how Herbert Marcuse was on the right side of history.

During the height of student, black and brown, and increasing women’s protests against war, racism, and sexism, a new force emerged that drew Marcuse’s pointed critique. Charles Reich, a Yale law professor, published a widely popular book, “The Greening of America,” which asserted that the new youth movement involving major changes of consciousness, communal living, spirituality, and withdrawal from mainstream society would usher in a new order in America and elsewhere.

Reich saw these changes in places like San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury neighborhood, New York’s East Village, and others throughout the nation. The colorful clothing, the flowers, the unconventional hairstyles, the music, the open sexuality, even the drug use in the new “hippie” culture, often known as the “counterculture,” enthralled him. Above all, he loved the optimistic spirit emanating from these young people.

Marcuse saw it very differently. Thorkelson’s bibliography notes that Marcuse published an article entitled “Charles Reich—A Negative View.” ­­He understood that this counterculture was profoundly apolitical and offered no solutions to the Vietnam War or any other real problems besetting the world. Earlier, in “One-Dimensional Man,” Marcuse had warned of this false negation: “But such modes of protest and transcendence are no longer contradictory to the status quo and no longer negative. They are rather the ceremonial part of practical behaviorism, its harmless negation, and are quickly digested by the status quo as part of its healthy diet.”

History has validated his perceptions. The counterculture predictably faded as a force in American society. Many of its participants resumed their lives as pillars of the neoliberal establishment, their bygone “hippie” days of the past credentializing them as free spirits. A few, unfortunately, succumbed to the drug culture and became casualties of the era while others continued to live highly marginal lives. Notwithstanding its insights and critiques, “The Greening of America” was little more than the corporate version of the great rebellion.

Marcuse continued to support real resistance, including the women’s movement. He regarded it as the most important radical movement of the times. He supported his student Davis throughout her activism and unjust incarceration. She writes in her foreword that “Fifty years later, as we confront the persisting globalities of slavery and colonialism, along with evolving structures of racial capitalism, Herbert Marcuse’s ideas continue to reveal important lessons. The insistence on imagining emancipatory futures, even under the most desperate circumstances, remains­­—Marcuse teaches us—a decisive element of both theory and practice.”

Davis is absolutely right. The time has come for a Marcuse revival.

 

 

Virus Claims First Fatality in U.S.; Washington State Declares Emergency

The governor of Washington state declared a state of emergency Saturday after a man died there of COVID-19, the first such reported death in the United States. More than 50 people in a nursing facility are sick and being tested for the virus.

Gov. Jay Inslee directed state agencies to use “all resources necessary” to prepare for and respond to the coronavirus outbreak. The declaration also allows the use of the Washington National Guard, if necessary.

“We will continue to work toward a day where no one dies from this virus,” the governor vowed.

Health officials in California, Oregon and Washington state are worried about the novel coronavirus spreading through West Coast communities because a growing number of people are being infected despite not having visited an area where there was an outbreak, nor apparently been in contact with anyone who had.

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The man who died was in his 50s, had underlying health conditions and no history of travel or contact with a known COVID-19 case, health officials in Washington state said at a news conference. A spokesperson for EvergreenHealth Medical Center, Kayse Dahl, said the person died in the facility in the Seattle suburb of Kirkland.

Dr. Frank Riedo, medical director of Infection Control at Evergreen, said local hospitals are seeing people with severe coronavirus symptoms but it’s probable that there are more cases in the community.

“This is the tip of the iceberg,” he said.

The health officials reported two cases of COVID-19 virus connected to a long-term care facility in the same suburb, Life Care Center of Kirkland. One is a Life Care worker, a woman in her 40s who is in satisfactory condition at a hospital, and the other is a woman in her 70s and a resident at Life Care who is hospitalized in serious condition. Neither had traveled abroad.

“In addition, over 50 individuals associated with Life Care are reportedly ill with respiratory symptoms or hospitalized with pneumonia or other respiratory conditions of unknown cause and are being tested for COVID-19,” Seattle and King County officials said. “Additional positive cases are expected.”

Amy Reynolds of the Washington state health department said in a brief telephone interview: “We are dealing with an emergency evolving situation.”

A growing number of cases in California, Washington state and Oregon are confounding authorities because the infected people hadn’t recently traveled overseas or had any known close contact with a traveler or an infected person.

The U.S. has about 60 confirmed cases. Worldwide, the number of people sickened by the virus hovered Friday around 83,000, and there were more than 2,800 deaths, most of them in China. A 60-year-old U.S. citizen died in Wuhan in early February.

Most infections result in mild symptoms, including coughing and fever, though some can become more serious and lead to pneumonia. Older people, especially those with chronic illnesses such as heart or lung disease, are especially vulnerable. Health officials think it spreads mainly from droplets when an infected person coughs or sneezes, similar to how the flu spreads.

The number of coronavirus cases in the United States is considered small. But convinced that they will grow, health agencies are ramping up efforts to identify those who might be sick.

To achieve more rapid testing capacity, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued an accelerated policy Saturday enabling laboratories to use tests they develop. FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn said his agency is “rapidly responding and adapting to this dynamic and evolving situation.”

The California Department of Public Health said Friday that the state will receive enough kits from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to test up to 1,200 people a day for the COVID-19 virus — a day after Gov. Gavin Newsom complained to federal health officials that the state had already exhausted its initial 200 test kits.

Oregon was able to more quickly identify a case — an employee of an elementary school in Lake Oswego near Portland because it was able to test a sample locally. School district officials said Saturday the employee had been visited in the hospital by several people before he was diagnosed. Those individuals have been asked to observe a two-week quarantine and are being closely monitored.

The district is deep-cleaning all its schools and all school buses with the goal of having students back in class Monday, said Superintendent Lora de la Cruz. But Forest Hills Elementary, where the man worked, is closed until Wednesday, marking two weeks since he was last at the school.

Earlier U.S. cases include three people who were evacuated from the central China city of Wuhan, epicenter of the outbreak; 14 people who returned from China, or their spouses; and 42 American passengers on the Diamond Princess cruise ship, who were flown to U.S. military bases in California and Texas for quarantining.

The U.S. government looked at sending dozens of Californians, several of whom tested positive for the virus, who had been aboard the cruise ship to a state-owned facility in Costa Mesa, California. Local officials objected, saying they weren’t included in the planning and wanting to know what safeguards would be in place to prevent spread of the virus. The U.S. government said it didn’t need to use the facility after all.

At UC Davis Medical Center in California, at least 124 registered nurses and other health care workers were sent home for “self-quarantine” after a Solano County woman with the virus was admitted, National Nurses United, a nationwide union representing registered nurses, said Friday.

The case “highlights the vulnerability of the nation’s hospitals to this virus,” the union said.

Washington state health officials announced two other new coronavirus cases Friday night, including a high school student who attends Jackson High School in Everett, said Dr. Chris Spitters of the Snohomish County Health District.

The other case in Washington was a woman in in King County in her 50s who had recently traveled to South Korea, authorities said. Neither patient was seriously ill.

___

Associated Press writers Rachel La Corte in Olympia, Washington; and Gillian Flaccus in Lake Oswego, Oregon, contributed to this report.

U.S., Taliban Sign Deal Aimed at Ending 18-Year Afghanistan War

DOHA, Qatar—Acknowledging a military stalemate after nearly two decades of conflict, the United States on Saturday signed a peace agreement with the Taliban that is aimed at ending America’s longest war and bringing U.S. troops home from Afghanistan more than 18 years after they invaded in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

The historic deal, signed by chief negotiators from the two sides and witnessed by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, could see the withdrawal of all American and allied forces in the next 14 months and allow President Donald Trump to keep a key campaign pledge to extract the U.S. from “endless wars.” But it could also easily unravel, particularly if the Taliban fail to meet their commitments.

At the White House, Trump told reporters the U.S. deserves credit for having helped Afghanistan take a step toward peace. He spoke cautiously of the deal’s prospects for success and cautioned the Taliban against violating their commitments.

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“We think we’ll be successful in the end,” he said, referring to all-Afghan peace talks and a final U.S. exit. He said he will be “meeting personally with Taliban leaders in the not-too-distant future,” and described the group as “tired of war.”

He did not say where or why he plans to meet with Taliban leaders. He said he thinks they are serious about the deal they signed but warned that if it fails, the U.S. could restart combat.

“If bad things happen, we’ll go back” in with military firepower, Trump said.

Pompeo was similarly cautious.

“Today, we are realistic. We are seizing the best opportunity for peace in a generation,” Pompeo said in the Qatari capital of Doha. “Today, we are restrained. We recognize that America shouldn’t fight in perpetuity in the graveyard of empires if we can help Afghans forge peace.”

Under the agreement, the U.S. would draw its forces down to 8,600 from 13,000 in the next three to four months, with the remaining U.S. forces withdrawing in 14 months. The complete pullout would depend on the Taliban meeting their commitments to prevent terrorism, including specific obligations to renounce al-Qaida and prevent that group or others from using Afghan soil to plot attacks on the U.S. or its allies.

The deal sets the stage for intra-Afghan peace talks to begin around March 10, with the aim of negotiating a permanent cease-fire and a power-sharing agreement between rival Afghan groups. It’s perhaps the most complicated and difficult phase of the plan. It does not, however, tie America’s withdrawal to any specific outcome from the all Afghan talks, according to U.S. officials.

Pompeo said that “the chapter of American history on the Taliban is written in blood” and stressed that while the road ahead would be difficult, the deal represented “the best opportunity for peace in a generation.”

At a parallel ceremony in Kabul, U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Afghan President Ashraf Ghani signed a joint statement committing the Afghan government to support the U.S.-Taliban deal, which is viewed skeptically by many war-weary Afghans, particularly women who fear a comeback of repression under the ultra-conservative Taliban.

President George W. Bush had ordered the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in response to 9/11. Some U.S. troops currently serving there had not yet been born when al-Qaida hijackers flew two airliners into the twin towers of the World Trade Center, crashed another into the Pentagon and took down a fourth in Pennsylvania, killing almost 3,000 people.

It only took a few months to topple the Taliban and send Osama bin Laden and top al-Qaida militants scrambling across the border into Pakistan, but the war dragged on for years as the U.S. tried to establish a stable, functioning state in one of the least developed countries in the world. The Taliban regrouped, and currently hold sway over half the country.

The United States has spent nearly $1 trillion in Afghanistan, two-thirds of that on defense, most of it for its own soldiers but also for the Afghan Security Forces. More than 3,500 U.S. and coalition soldiers have died in Afghanistan, more than 2,400 of them Americans.

But the conflict was also frequently ignored by U.S. politicians and the American public as the memory of the attacks on that crisp, sunny morning faded, despite having changed how many Americans see the world.

While Pompeo attended the ceremony in Qatar, he appeared to avoid any direct contact with the Taliban delegation. The deal was signed by U.S. peace envoy Zalmay Khalilzad and Taliban leader Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, who then shook hands. Members of the Taliban shouted “Allahu Akhbar” or “God is greatest.” Others in attendance, including the Qatari hosts, applauded politely.

“We are committed to implementing this agreement,” Baradar said in brief comments. “I call on all Afghans to honestly work for peace and gather around the table for peace negotiations.”

Some Taliban celebrated the deal as a victory. “Today is the day of victory, which has come with the help of Allah,” said Abbas Stanikzai, one of the Taliban’s lead negotiators.

Meanwhile in Kabul, in a rare show of unity, Ghani sat beside his chief political rival Abdullah Abdullah at a ceremony with Esper and NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg that included a declaration between the Afghan government and the United States intended to show U.S. support for Afghanistan.

For Afghanistan’s government which has been deeply criticized by its political opponents, including Abdullah, the real job ahead will be cobbling together a negotiating team to sit across from the Taliban. The talks are to determine the face of a post-war Afghanistan.

Those negotiations, to be held in Oslo, Norway, are expected to begin around March 10. The Taliban have made it clear they expect the Afghan government to release their 5,000 prisoners before the start of negotiations. Around that time, the Taliban are to release 1,000 government security forces. Until now the government has not agreed to the prisoner release which could unravel intra-Afghan negotiations before they even get started.

Esper warned the road ahead was a long one and would not be without its challenges. “This is a hopeful moment, but it is only the beginning, the road ahead will not be easy.”

Trump has repeatedly promised to get the U.S. out of wars in the Middle East, and the withdrawal of troops could boost his re-election bid in a nation weary of involvement in distant conflicts. Last September, on short notice, he called off what was to be a signing ceremony with the Taliban at Camp David after a series of new Taliban attacks. But he has since been supportive of talks.

It’s not clear what will become of gains made in women’s rights since the toppling of the Taliban, which had repressed women and girls under a strict brand of Sharia law. Women’s rights in Afghanistan had been a top concern of both the Bush and Obama administration, but it remains a deeply conservative country, with women still struggling for basic rights.

There are currently more than 16,500 soldiers serving under the NATO banner, of which 8,000 are American. Germany has the next largest contingent, with 1,300 troops, followed by Britain with 1,100.

In all, 38 NATO countries are contributing forces to Afghanistan. The alliance officially concluded its combat mission in 2014 and now provides training and support to Afghan forces.

The U.S. has a separate contingent of 5,000 troops deployed to carry out counter-terrorism missions and provide air and ground support to Afghan forces when requested.

Since the start of negotiations with the Taliban, the U.S. has stepped up its air assaults on the Taliban as well as a local Islamic State affiliate. Last year the U.S. air force dropped more bombs on Afghanistan than in any year since 2013.

Seven days ago, the Taliban began a seven-day “reduction of violence” period, a prerequisite to the peace deal signing.

___

Gannon reported from Kabul, Afghanistan. Associated Press writers Rahim Faiez and Tameem Akhgar in Kabul, Lorne Cook in Brussels, Robert Burns in Washington and Joseph Krauss in Jerusalem contributed.

Supreme Court Set to Hear Arguments on Rapid Deportation

WASHINGTON — The man slipped into the U.S from Tijuana, Mexico, and made it just 25 yards from the border before he was arrested.

A seven-month journey from Sri Lanka was over for Vijayakumar Thuraissigiam. Now he would be able to tell an American official why he had fled the place he had lived virtually his entire life: As a member of Sri Lanka’s Tamil minority, he had been beaten and threatened. He would seek asylum to remain in the United States.

His timing couldn’t have been worse.

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His arrival coincided with the start of the Trump administration and its sustained effort to crack down on asylum-seekers. Officials rejected his claim in an initial screening and he was designated for rapid deportation, or expedited removal as federal law calls it.

Now the Supreme Court will decide whether Thuraissigiam and others like him can be deported without ever getting to make their case to a federal judge. Arguments will take place Monday.

The administration is seeking a sweeping ruling that it could potentially use to deport millions of people, even those arrested far from the border and who have been in the country for years, experts on the issue said.

“The Supreme Court has held for more than a century that anyone in the United States, even those illegally, are entitled to due process. If successful, the government’s argument in this case would reverse this basic principle of constitutional law and theoretically deny due process rights to millions of undocumented immigrants,” said Stephen Yale-Loehr, an immigration specialist at Cornell University Law School. Yale-Loehr signed onto a court brief siding with the asylum-seeker.

The Justice Department counters in its Supreme Court filings that immigrants have no constitutional rights regarding their application to enter the United States under high court rulings. The limited review that Congress provided for when it created expedited removal proceedings is sufficient, the administration said.

But the federal appeals court in San Francisco relied on the Supreme Court’s 2008 decision in favor of court access to detainees at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to rule that the practice of denying federal court review violates the Constitution. The Supreme Court agreed to hear the administration’s appeal. Thuraissigiam is living in the New York area at the moment.

Since 2004, immigration officials have targeted for quick deportation undocumented immigrants who are picked up within 100 miles of the U.S. border and within 14 days of entering the country. The Trump administration is seeking to expand that authority so that people detained anywhere in the U.S. and up to two years after they got here could be quickly deported.

A federal judge has put that policy on hold and the administration’s appeal will be heard Friday by the federal appeals court in Washington.

The administration has imposed other restrictions on those who say they need refuge in the U.S. because they would be harmed if they had to return home. People crossing through Mexico before arriving at the southern border can no longer seek asylum in the U.S. unless they first have been denied asylum elsewhere. The Supreme Court allowed the policy to take effect while a legal fight over it plays out in the courts.

A separate “remain in Mexico” policy that requires asylum-seekers to wait in Mexico until their cases are considered by American officials was temporarily halted this past Friday by a federal appeals court.

People who come to the United States to ask for asylum must persuade immigration officials that they have a “credible fear” of persecution in their home country. Asylum-seekers who pass that screening generally are allowed into the country as their cases progress. But the bar to grant asylum is narrow; a person must face persecution for race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a social group.

After Thuraissigiam’s arrest in February 2017, he told anyone who asked that because of his support for a Tamil political candidate, he was arrested, put in a van and beaten so severely that he spent 11 days in a hospital. Immigration officials found the account credible, but they determined he did not have a real fear of persecution if he returned home.

Having failed this initial screening, known as a “credible fear” screening, he was eligible for quick deportation.

Lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union who represent him said the official who first interviewed Thuraissigiam was unable to elicit and synthesize critical information, including that the episode likely was a widely known “white van” abduction by Sri Lankan security forces. The translation via telephone also didn’t help, the lawyers said.

More critically, the administration doesn’t want to allow Thuraissigiam to make his case in front of a federal judge, said Lee Gelernt, the ACLU lawyer who will argue the case. If his client loses at the Supreme Court, Gelernt said, “it will be the first time in U.S. history that an individual was deprived of their liberty, citizen or noncitizen, without the opportunity for a federal court to review the case.”

Supporting the administration, the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation in Sacramento, California, said in its court filing that Thuraissigiam is “a would-be immigrant whose only connection to this country is stepping illegally a few yards inside the border.” He has no constitutional right to a full-blown court hearing, the foundation wrote.

A decision in Department of Homeland Security v. Thuraissigiam, 19-161, is expected before summer.

Brutality of Hindu-Muslim Riot Emerges as India Counts Its Dead

NEW DELHI — The wounded came in waves. First in ones and twos, limping up the steps and staggering through the aluminum doors, and then in wheelbarrows, with bleeding skulls and stabbed necks. Finally, the motorcycles and auto-rickshaws arrived, their seats stained with the blood of as many as they could hold.

As the Mustafabad neighborhood of India’s capital was ravaged by communal riots for three days this week, the Al-Hind Hospital turned from a community clinic into a trauma ward.

Doctors like M.A. Anwar were for the first time dealing with injuries such as gunshot wounds, crushed skulls and torn genitals.

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“I wanted to cry and scream,” he recalled. “Something inside of me died during those three days.”

Almost a week after the clashes between Hindus and Muslims began, a clearer picture of the horrors inflicted during New Delhi’s worst communal riots in decades has begun to emerge.

On the eve of President Donald Trump’s first state visit to India last Sunday, Hindus and Muslims in the Indian capital charged at each other with homemade guns and crude weapons, leaving the streets where the rioting occurred resembling a war zone, with houses, shops, mosques, schools and vehicles up in flames. At least 42 people were killed and hundreds more wounded.

Authorities have struggled to identify some of the bodies because of the gruesomeness of the injuries.

While both sides behaved brutally, most of the victims were Muslim.

Authorities haven’t given an official account of what sparked the riots, though the violence appeared to be a culmination of growing tensions that followed the passage of a new citizenship law in December.

The law fast-tracks naturalization for some religious minorities from neighboring countries but not Muslims. Opponents say it violates India’s secular constitution, and further marginalizes the 200 million Muslims in this Hindu-majority nation of 1.4 billion people.

The law spurred massive protests across India that left at least 23 dead.

But what unfolded in Mustafabad this week was far more brutal, with mobs hacking individuals with swords, burning people alive and bludgeoning people to death.

A Hindu intelligence bureau officer was repeatedly stabbed and his dead body thrown into a sewage drain that divides Hindu and Muslim residential areas. A Muslim man had his legs spread so far apart that the lower half of his body tore. His condition remained critical.

Questions have been raised about the role of the New Delhi police and whether they stood by while the violence raged or even aided the Hindu mobs.

A New Delhi police spokesman, Anil Mittal, denied that police had aided rioters.

Al-Hind hospital’s doctors said authorities kept ambulances from reaching certain riot-hit places.

A little after midnight on Wednesday — more than 72 hours after the violence began — a New Delhi High Court passed an extraordinary order directing the police to provide safe passage for ambulances.

It was too late for many victims.

With streets taken over by the mobs and no way through for ambulances, Anwar knew early on that his clinic would soon be overcome with wounded.

Some slumped in plastic chairs as they draped gunshot-riddled arms and legs over tables.

Others just lay on the floor, bleeding.

Those who were there described the blood and chaos, but also shared oddly uplifting stories of teamwork and grit.

“We didn’t sleep. We didn’t eat anything. All we wanted to do was save lives. And we did,” said Aanis Mohammad, a volunteer at the clinic. “No patient of any religion was turned away.”

By mid-afternoon Wednesday as the violence came to an end, Anwar and his overwhelmed colleagues had treated more than 400 people and referred almost 100 to larger hospitals. Dozens, however, remained at the clinic in critical condition.

The hospital also gave refuge to those fleeing the violence, providing more than 50 people with food, bedding and safety.

Clean-up efforts in Mustafabad are underway but the scars are still visible.

At Guru Teg Bahadur hospital along New Delhi’s eastern border, 18-year-old Salman Ansari waited for his father’s body to be handed over.

Ansari’s father had gone out to collect scrap for money as there was no food in the house. After seeing police assurances on the news, he thought it would be safe. It wasn’t.

Ansari said he was sleeping when two strangers dumped his father outside their home early Wednesday.

He carted his father 3 kilometers (1.8 miles) on the family’s rickshaw to a private clinic. The doctors demanded 5,000 rupees ($69). His pockets were empty.

By the time Ansari managed to reach a public hospital, his father was dead.

For Anwar, the doctor, he said he eventually grew numb to the carnage. Yet he’s still coming to grips with how fellow Indians could do what they did to one another.

“It’s as if evil had pervaded and housed itself in the hearts of the mob,” he said.

___

Associated Press writer Aniruddha Ghosal contributed to this report.

Apple Won’t Allow Movie Villains to Use iPhones

This article originally appeared on Salon.

Editor’s note: The following post contains spoilers for Rian Johnson’s “Knives Out.”

Rian Johnson reveals in a new video interview with Vanity Fair an interesting mandate Apple has on movie productions: Bad guys and villain characters in films are not allowed to be seen using iPhones. The reveal was made as Johnson was breaking down a pivotal scene from his most recent directorial effort, “Knives Out.” The scene is when Ransom Drysdale (Chris Evans) arrives at the Thrombey household and all of the main characters converge for the first time. Several characters are seen holding iPhones, including Jamie Lee Curtis’ Linda Drysdale, but the one person without an Apple product is Ransom. “Knives Out” viewers know that Ransom is the killer at the center of Johnson’s murder mystery, which means the character was prohibited from being featured in “Knives Out” with an iPhone.

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“I don’t know if I should say this or not,” Johnson says in the Vanity Fair video. “Not because it’s lascivious or something, but because it’s gonna screw me on the next mystery movie that I write. But forget it, I’ll say it, it’s very interesting. Apple, they let you use iPhones in movies, but, and this is very pivotal, if you’re ever watching a mystery movie, bad guys cannot have iPhones on camera. Every single filmmaker who has a bad guy in their movie that’s supposed to be a secret wants to murder me right now.”

“Knives Out” opened in theaters November 27 and became a breakout hit at the box office, grossing $163 million in the U.S. and $306 million worldwide. These totals are more than impressive for a feature film based on an original idea, and the success of “Knives Out” has launched a new franchise for Lionsgate. The studio has announced it’s moving forward on a “Knives Out” sequel to once again be written and directed by Johnson. The sequel will find Daniel Craig’s detective Benoit Blanc investigating a new murder. Johnson’s “Knives Out” script was nominated for the Best Original Screenplay Oscar.

U.S., Taliban Set to Sign Afghanistan Peace Deal

WASHINGTON — America’s longest war may finally be nearing an end.

The United States and the Islamists it toppled from power in Afghanistan are poised to sign a peace deal Saturday after a conflict that outlasted two U.S. commanders in chief and is now led by a third eager to fulfill a campaign promise to extricate America from “endless wars.”

More than 18 years since President George W. Bush ordered bombing in response to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the agreement will set the stage for the withdrawal of U.S. troops, some of whom were not yet born when the World Trade Center collapsed on that crisp, sunny morning that changed how Americans see the world.

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Saturday’s ceremony also signals the potential end of a tremendous investment of blood and treasure. The U.S. spent more than $750 billion, and on all sides the war cost tens of thousands of lives lost, permanently scarred and indelibly interrupted. Yet it’s also a conflict that is frequently ignored by U.S. politicians and the American public.

In the Qatari capital of Doha, America’s top diplomat will stand with leaders of the Taliban, Afghanistan’s former rulers who harbored Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida network as they plotted, and then celebrated, the hijackings of four airliners that were crashed into lower Manhattan, the Pentagon and a field in western Pennsylvania, killing almost 3,000 people.

It will likely be an uncomfortable appearance for Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who privately told a conference of U.S. ambassadors at the State Department this week that he was going only because President Donald Trump had insisted on his participation, according to two people present.

A statement from Trump on Friday said Pompeo will “witness” the signing of the agreement, leaving unclear if he will personally sign it on behalf of the United States, or if he will shake hands with Taliban representatives.

U.S. troops are to be withdrawn to 8,600 from about 13,000 in the weeks following Saturday’s signing. Further drawdowns are to depend on the Taliban meeting certain counter-terrorism conditions, compliance that will be assessed by the United States. But officials say soldiers will be coming home.

Trump, as he seeks re-election this year, is looking to make good on his campaign promise to bring troops home from the Middle East. Still, he has approached the Taliban agreement cautiously, steering clear of the crowing surrounding other major foreign policy actions, such as his talks with North Korea.

Last September, on short notice, he called off what was to be a signing ceremony with the Taliban at Camp David after a series of new Taliban attacks. But he has since been supportive of the talks led by his special envoy, Zalmay Khalilzad.

In a statement released by the White House, Trump said Friday that if the Taliban and Afghan governments live up to the commitments in the agreement, “we will have a powerful path forward to end the war in Afghanistan and bring our troops home,”

“These commitments represent an important step to a lasting peace in a new Afghanistan, free from al-Qaida, ISIS and any other terrorist group that would seek to bring us harm,” Trump said.

Under the agreement, the Taliban promise not to let extremists use the country as a staging ground for attacking the U.S. or its allies. But U.S. officials are loath to trust the Taliban to fulfill their obligations.

Pompeo did not mention the Afghan agreement as he touted Trump administration foreign policy achievements in a speech to a conservative group Friday. He has expressed doubts about the prospects. Yet, he will give his imprimatur to an agreement which he also has said represents “a historic opportunity for peace” after years and pain and suffering.

“We are now on the cusp of having an opportunity which may not succeed, but an opportunity for the first time to let the Afghan peoples’ voices be heard,” he told reporters this week.

If the agreement is successful, Afghanistan, the “graveyard of empires” that has repeatedly repelled foreign invaders from imperial Britain and Russia to the Soviet Union, will have once again successfully turned away a world power from its landlocked borders.

But prospects for Afghanistan’s future are uncertain. The agreement sets the stage for peace talks involving Afghani factions, which are likely to be complicated. Under the agreement, 5,000 Taliban are to be released from Afghan-run jails, but it’s not known if the Afghan government will do that. There are also questions about whether Taliban fighters loyal to various warlords will be willing to disarm.

It’s not clear what will become of gains made in women’s rights since the toppling of the Taliban, which had repressed women and girls under a strict brand of Sharia law. Women’s rights in Afghanistan had been a top concern of both the Bush and Obama administration.

In a sign of “the international community’s commitment to Afghanistan,” a separate ceremony will be held Saturday in the Afghan capital of Kabul, with U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper and NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, said Sediq Sediqqui, spokesman for Afghanistan’s President Ashraf Ghani.

Already, some U.S. lawmakers and veterans of the conflict have raised red flags about any agreement with the Taliban.

Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming led 21 Republican legislators in demanding that the administration not concede anything to the Taliban that would allow them to once again harbor those who seek to harm U.S. citizens and interests. Cheney, the daughter of former President Bush’s vice president, Dick Cheney, urged Pompeo and Esper in a letter to reject any commitment to a full withdrawal of American troops.

Pompeo said, “We’re proud of our gains, but our generals have determined that this war is unlikely to be won militarily without tremendous additional resources. All sides are tired of fighting.”

On this, he is in rare agreement with Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who said this week in a Democratic presidential debate that the government has “a sacred responsibility to” American soldiers. “That is not to use our military to solve problems that cannot be solved militarily. We are not winning in Afghanistan. We are not winning in the Middle East,” she said.

Teachers Demonstrate How to Save America’s Public Services

In the early morning of February 26, a chill hung in the air as a line of teachers and school support staffers clad in bright red union hats, jackets or some combination thereof stood on a busy street corner outside of Highland Park Middle School in St. Paul, Minnesota.

As cars sped past, some with horns blaring in support, the teachers and school workers—who are members of the St. Paul Federation of Educators (SPFE)—hoisted signs proclaiming their willingness to fight on behalf of students.

SPFE represents more than 3,500 teachers, education assistants and school and community support staff members. Minnesota state law requires districts to negotiate with their unionized employees every two years, and the current round of contract talks between SPFE and the St. Paul Public Schools, under the leadership of Superintendent Joe Gothard, has been going on since last May.

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Now, SPFE President Nick Faber says the union and the students and families they serve can no longer wait for Gothard and his team to step up and negotiate in good faith. On February 20, a majority of SPFE members voted to authorize a strike against the St. Paul Public Schools.

If an agreement between the union and the school district is not reached by March 10, thousands of SPFE members will walk off the job for the first time since 1946.

The key contract items SPFE is pushing for include fully staffed mental health teams in all schools, a greater investment in special education staffing and programming, and an increase in the number of multilingual staff members.

This puts the union squarely in line with other social justice-oriented labor movements that have been revived in recent years, as seen in events such as the teacher strikes in Chicago and Los Angeles in 2019. Like SPFE, the Chicago and Los Angeles unions also advocated for more than the typical bread-and-butter issues of union contracts, such as salary increases and seniority rights, and additionally pushed for better living and learning conditions for students.

All of this is taking place against the backdrop of the recent wave of Red for Ed teacher strikes and wildcat actions that have roiled school districts and state capitals from California to Oklahoma, West Virginia, Puerto Rico, and beyond.

These teacher-led movements for greater pay, smaller class sizes, and more respect and stability for public education overall have been credited with inspiring worker strikes in other fields too, including auto workers and Amazon employees. Along the way, organized labor’s profile has risen, making it a sought-after voting bloc in today’s political landscape.

This is likely a main reason why Democratic presidential candidates Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Amy Klobuchar sent out tweets in support of SPFE’s potential strike, although all three also have established track records of support for union workers.

SPFE’s emphasis on the needs of students has also earned the union crucial support from community members.

Kirinda Anderson is the parent of a seventh-grader at St. Paul’s Highland Middle School, and she joined the teachers as they rallied in front of the school on February 26. As she stood shoulder-to-shoulder with those holding picket signs and chanting slogans, Anderson said she came out to implore the St. Paul schools to act with urgency on behalf of all students.

“I attended a budget meeting held by the district in January,” Anderson recalled. “There, the district said they have a three-to-five-year plan to address the need for more mental health support in schools, but our students can’t wait that long.”

They need help as soon as possible, she noted, citing the high levels of trauma many students have to contend with both inside and outside of school.

“If the district is serious about educating all of St. Paul’s children,” Anderson said, “they should settle the contract with SPFE now.”

As chants of “Get up, get down/St. Paul is a union town” and “Sí se puede” rang out around her, Highland Park Middle School music teacher Beth Swanberg struggled to hold back tears when explaining why she was rallying on the street corner before the school day started.

“I have heard that one out of four students, overall, has an undiagnosed mental health issue, and they need so much more support,” she said. They are simply dealing with what’s going on around them, Swanberg stated, from the effects of institutionalized racism to the trauma of gun violence.

It adds up to everyday stress, she said, and that stress is impacting students’ ability to learn and stay focused on school.

Swanberg also drew attention to some of the more global factors that make it hard for teachers and support staff to reach every student they work with. For one thing, she pointed out, special education mandates are woefully underfunded at the federal level, leaving states and school districts to make up the difference by increasing caseloads for teachers, for example, or by pulling money out of general education funds.

Another factor looming in the background, Swanberg believes, is a decades-long disinvestment in public services across the United States. “There has been a starving of public entities—from health care to public schools and public housing,” she argued, to the detriment of the students and families who are most in need of such services.

As if on cue, a new report shows that a large number of Minnesota’s public schools are facing serious budget deficits even though lawmakers authorized a $540 million funding increase in 2019. School districts in the Twin Cities metro area alone are staring down $93 million in funding gaps, according to a local news outlet.

In an interview with Minnesota Public Radio, Scott Croonquist of the Association of Metropolitan School Districts put the blame for this gap on the “rising cost of educating students with a growing number of special needs.” It’s a problem Croonquist says won’t be fixed until the state reckons with the chronic underfunding of the special education services districts are legally required to provide.

Teacher salaries in the state—which fall near the middle of average teacher salaries nationally—are also rising just slightly faster than the annual 2 percent bump in education funding authorized by the Minnesota legislature.

On top of this, public education in the state, as well as across the country, has been largely underfunded since at least the early 2000s—right as the standardized test-based accountability movement arose, demanding that “no child be left behind.”

These factors have helped put the squeeze on school districts like St. Paul’s, where two-thirds of students live in poverty, according to federal guidelines, and hundreds lack a permanent home. The city’s schools are also some of the most racially and linguistically diverse in the United States.

The question for many St. Paul teachers and school staffers is what to do about this. Should the narrative of failing public schools be allowed to continue to flourish, with little public discussion of the threat posed by privatization, underfunding, and rising poverty rates for students and families?

Or should SPFE insist on striking in order to fight for the schools and the support systems they believe all kids need and deserve?

“Educators have pushed the district to settle the contract since we started bargaining in May,” Faber said in a statement. If that settlement doesn’t come by March 10, expect to see a wave of union red filling St. Paul’s streets in response.

This article was produced by Our Schools , a project of the Independent Media Institute.

Sarah Lahm is a Minneapolis-based writer and researcher. Her work has appeared in outlets such as the Progressive and In These Times. Follow her on Twitter @sarahrlahm.