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American History for Truthdiggers: Whose Revolution? (1775-1783)

Editor’s note: The past is prologue. The stories we tell about ourselves and our forebears inform the sort of country we think we are and help determine public policy. As our current president promises to “Make America great again,” this moment is an appropriate time to reconsider our past, look back at various eras of United States history and re-evaluate America’s origins. When, exactly, were we “great”?

Below is the sixth installment of the “American History for Truthdiggers” series, a pull-no-punches appraisal of our shared, if flawed, past. The author of the series, Danny Sjursen, an active-duty major in the U.S. Army, served military tours in Iraq and Afghanistan and taught the nation’s checkered, often inspiring past when he was an assistant professor of history at West Point. His wartime experiences, his scholarship, his skill as a writer and his patriotism illuminate these Truthdig posts.

This article completes Sjursen’s survey of the American War of Independence, begun in last Saturday’s installment. The series will resume two weeks from now.

Part 6 of “American History for Truthdiggers.” / See: Part 1; Part 2; Part 3; Part 4; Part 5.

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“The war [of independence] was not just about home rule, but about who would rule at home.” —Historian Carl Becker

“The History of our Revolution will be one continued lie from one end to the other.” —John Adams (1790)

Just how radical was the American Revolution? Historians have debated that question for the better part of a century. A true consensus still escapes us. Nonetheless, the debate itself is instructive and tells us something of the nature of this experience.

No doubt, the American version of revolution lacks many of the standard symbols of radical revolution as we’ve come to perceive them, with neither the guillotines of France (1789-1794) nor the gulags and purges of Russia (1917-1923). Still, there was an 18th-century radicalism, all its own, to the American experience.

Pennsylvania was one hotbed of radical egalitarianism. As early as 1775, radicalism erupted in the Philadelphia militia. The radicals labeled themselves the Associators and proclaimed an agenda for (armed) social reform in the colony. Six decades before Karl Marx began writing, they sought to curb the individual accumulation of excess wealth and called for universal white male voting (regardless of financial status) and a general opening up of economic and political opportunity to the masses.

The power of the impassioned masses (or mob) continued throughout the war, especially in its early phases. After being read the Declaration of Independence, New York City patriots used a rope to pull down an equestrian statue of King George III at Bowling Green. The crowd then demolished the statue, cutting off the head and mutilating the face. The scene calls forth memories of the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s statue in Baghdad’s Firdos Square in 2003. As a final radical act, the patriots melted down the statue into 42,000 musket balls for the Continental Army to fire at the king’s soldiers.

It must be remembered that simultaneous with and subsequent to the drafting of the Articles of Confederation for the United States, each individual state tackled the serious business of crafting its own, new constitution. Some were rather conservative documents, others quite radical and egalitarian. Indeed, in only two states—Virginia and Delaware—did the initial revolutionary constitutions maintain property requirements for voting (though many postwar constitutions later reinstituted property restrictions). In the excited frenzy of revolution, many elites “lost control” of the masses. This made many leaders, John Adams among them, uncomfortable.

States such as Pennsylvania experienced what historian Gary Nash called “a revolution within a revolution,” instituting universal male suffrage, a powerful unicameral legislature, and early steps to abolish slavery. Thomas Paine’s hand was again at work in this business, seeking to make Pennsylvania “the most advanced democracy in the world.” Vermont, too, had a radical trajectory, becoming the first state to ban slavery outright, in 1777. New Jersey even extended voting rights—however temporarily—to women, something no other state would achieve until Wyoming did so nearly a century later, in 1869.

Furthermore, the civil aspect of this war, as we saw in the previous installment of this series, added to the radicalism of the revolution. Though there were no guillotines in Philadelphia or Boston, there were, by war’s end, more land cessions and flight by loyalists (mostly to Canada), per capita, than in the later French Revolution.

Still, for all this evidence—and much more like it—there remains something ultimately unpersuasive about the “highly radical revolution” argument: It ignores the experience of non-white males. It must be remembered that while, in a sense, the revolution had quite radical components for those white men—even those without property—the experience and outcome of revolution appeared far less radical, and more conservative, when seen through black or Indian eyes. That, ultimately, explains the geographic (focused on the Northern colonies), racial and gender limitations of historian Gordon Wood—made famous by a memorable scene in the film “Good Will Hunting”—and his esteemed book “The Radicalism of the American Revolution.”

The Forgotten Fifth: When Freedom Wore a Red Coat—The Slave Revolution

“Your 4th of July is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license … your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery.” —Frederick Douglass (1852)

Examine the fragment of the painting at the top of this article. In it, a proud, dashing black soldier (with a plume in his cap) fights on the British side against the French in a 1781 battle in Europe. In the American War of Independence, too, African and African-American slaves often took up arms with the British against the colonists. Many were members of the 1st Ethiopian Regiment, raised in November 1775 by the royal governor of Virginia, Lord Dunmore, in a famed proclamation that bore his name. Stitched into the uniform of each member of the Ethiopian Regiment were three words: “Liberty to Slaves.”

Many of us, at least among those of a certain age, will remember the scene from the (terribly inaccurate) 2000 movie “The Patriot,” starring Mel Gibson. A black man and former slave joins the Continental Army and by the final battle wins the respect of even the most bigoted soldier in the Gibson character’s unit. It’s a touching moment, and, indeed, some 5,000 blacks—slave and free—would fight on the patriot side. The film, along with many other popular depictions of the Revolutionary War, gives us the impression that however imperfect American society was, most blacks fought on the colonists’ side. Nothing could be further from the truth. Proportional to their numbers in the population, black men were more likely than whites to serve as combatants in the revolution; only, by and large, they fought against the side that had proclaimed all men were created equal.

This is a dizzying, inconvenient fact for some. It complicates and potentially sullies the Revolutionary effort. But it is a fact we must know to describe the totality, warts and all, of our revolution. Lord Dunmore raised 800 to 1,000 slave volunteers by offering freedom to those who would flee their masters and gather under his banner. Word of Dunmore’s proclamation spread rapidly through the colonies, giving hope to slaves and striking fear in planters throughout the Americas. It convinced many fence-sitting slave holders that there could now be no reconciliation with the crown. As Edward Rutledge, a South Carolina signer of the Declaration of Independence, wrote, the Dunmore proclamation effected “an eternal separation between Great Britain and the colonies … more than any other expedient.”

Indeed, across the colonies, especially in the South, slaves escaped their plantations and sought refuge wherever and whenever the British army passed by or occupied a sizable locale. One military historian, Gregory Urwin, penned an influential article on this phenomenon, aptly titled “When Freedom Wore a Red Coat.” Think on that for a moment. Most runaways sought their liberty by joining the British cause, not that of the patriots. What might that say about our revolution? Was it thus no more than a contradiction, counter-revolutionary, and a farce? Perhaps, but once again matters are not clear-cut.

At war’s end, the British actually sailed away from America with many thousands of slaves. No doubt they left behind some who had helped the British cause, and they sold or returned others, but, by and large—and to their great credit—most British generals refused the demands of local colonists to return all of their slaves. At least a few of the slaves who left with the British had belonged to George Washington. Ouch. One must consider the further irony that white patriots had for two decades regularly used the terms “enslavement” and “slavery” to describe their treatment by Britain’s Parliament and tax collectors.

Among the blacks who had fought alongside the British, many earned a new life after the war. Some 1,500 families settled in Birchtown, Nova Scotia, in Canada. Disease and a harsh climate decimated the former slaves, but at least they were free. Some years later, in 1792, more than a thousand set out for the west coast of Africa, where they founded a new city, the aptly named Freetown, now the capitol of Sierra Leone.

These stories are inspiring and give us valuable insight into the two sides of the revolutionary struggle. Still, we have to be careful not to overstate the benevolence of British actions toward the slaves. These were, at root, military, not humanitarian, gestures, and we cannot ignore the opportunism and self-interest in Lord Dunmore’s proclamation. It’s important to note that Dunmore extended the promise of freedom only to those slaves who were owned by rebellious patriot masters. Loyalists could keep their human property, and, indeed, many did bring their chattel slaves along into prolonged exile in Canada. Compared with Carolina, Canada was free, but it was by no means a slave utopia.

Still, viewed broadly, the vast majority of slaves either favored, served with or fought for the British rather than the patriots during the war. And, well, the enraged planter class never let them forget it. Though this is almost entirely lost to modern readers, the Revolution was also the greatest slave rebellion in American history. It terrified the owner class and tightened an increasingly brutal slave system. The tragic irony, as historian Ira Berlin has shown, is that the great slave revolt of 1775-83 spooked Southern planters into developing a more stringent, controlled and vigorous Antebellum slave system than that which existed before the Revolution. Millions of blacks would come to live under the lash of that slave society, the image to which we’ve grown accustomed.

The Other America: The Revolution Looking East From Indian Country

“Lay waste all the [native] settlements around … that the country may not be merely overrun but destroyed. … Rush on with the war whoop and fixed bayonet.”  —George Washington, official orders to Gen. John Sullivan (1779)

Fifteen years ago, an excellent historian by the name of Daniel K. Richter penned a comprehensive native history of early America, with the paradigm-shifting title “Facing East From Indian Country.” Perhaps facing east is what a historian must do when considering Native Americans in American history, including the Revolution: To view Indian experiences, face eastward, rather than start from the Atlantic coast and view the unfolding of history solely in a westward direction. How different the situation must have appeared to the Creek tribe southwest of the colonies or the Iroquois to the northwest of New York.

Just as the slaves realized that their interests were better served with the redcoats, the Native Americans recognized that their autonomy had a better chance of being preserved if they allied with the supposed imperial tyrants and against those who ostensibly extolled the inalienable human right to liberty. Native life, liberty and happiness could, they believed, be maintained only by standing in opposition to the purported patriots.

And so it was that most Indians fruitlessly waged war while allied with one imperial power—the British—to stave off the encroachment of a new, more dangerous, colonial empire, what Thomas Jefferson once called an “empire of liberty.” The outcome was tragic.

As we saw during the French and Indian War, the list of Southern colonial patriots is also a who’s who of land speculators in early America. Washington, Jefferson, Patrick Henry, they all were in on it at one time or another. Now, in the desperation of war, the speculation game changed again. Recruiting for the Continental Army—a miserable, long, thankless duty—became difficult as the war dragged on. Recruiting officers, as ever, needed some way to entice enlistees. It became necessary to promise volunteers land, often Indian land, beyond the mountains, a total of 10 million acres. Native land was thus promised to future settlers without the permission, certainly, or even the knowledge, of the tribes.

On the long frontier stretching from Georgia to New England, war with the British intermingled with smaller wars against British-backed native tribes. This was often the most vicious fighting the Revolution would produce. Take the example of frontier warfare in northwestern New York state. One historian, Page Smith, called the American campaign in western New York “the most ruthless application of scorched-earth policy in U.S. history.” Here, Gen. Washington unleashed Gen. John Sullivan with orders to destroy the great Iroquois confederation, and shatter it he did. The Iroquois mostly sided with the British, though the Revolution kicked off an internal Iroquois civil war when one tribal branch, the Oneida, allied with the Continentals.

It got ugly, fast. Washington called the devastation of the Iroquois “the main American military effort of [1779],” and detached one-third of his army to accomplish the task. Villages were razed, 160,000 bushels of corn burned and thousands of fruit trees destroyed. Sullivan reported back to Congress that “except one town situated near the Allegheny … there is not a single town left in the country of the Five Nations [of Iroquois].” An Onondaga chief later summed up the experience thusly: “They [Sullivan’s troops] put to death all the women and children, excepting some of the young women, whom they carried away for the use of their soldiers and were afterwards put to death in a more shameful manner.” (Admittedly, of course, native atrocities along the settler frontier were also common.)

In the end, the war—and especially American victory in it—proved, as in the Seven Years’ War, to be yet another tragedy for Indians east of the Mississippi River. American colonists, millions that they were, were always more dangerous than a few thousand redcoats and a few hundred imperial bureaucrats spread thinly along the frontier. The United States of an America was an existential threat to the native way of life.

None of the affected tribes were included in negotiations toward the Treaty of Paris, which ended the Revolutionary War. No one consulted the Indians before the British saw fit to sign away millions of acres of native land to the new United States. Most native tribes would never accept such claims to their lands, which, to them, were predicated on the white man’s conception of international law, something that had little meaning to those living in Indian country.

This situation set up what would become a decade of on-again, off-again war between the armies of the new American Republic and the allied tribes of the Ohio Country in the years following the signing of the Treaty of Paris. The last barrier, the infamous British Proclamation Line of 1763, had been breached and the settler tide would never recede. In just over 50 years that incessant tide would reach the Pacific Ocean. Within a century, all overt native resistance was subdued, as tribes chose between genocidal extermination and a life on reservations.

Who Shall Fight for Liberty?: The Continental Army at War

“The insults and neglects which the army have met with beggars all description … they can endure it no longer. I am in rags. … I despise my countrymen. I wish I could say I was not born in America. I once gloried in it but am now ashamed.”  —Lt. Col. Ebenezer Huntington, Yale graduate and veteran of battles in Boston, Long Island and Yorktown (July 1780)

When you picture an American Revolutionary soldier, what do you see? A minuteman, of course, a logo of the New England Patriots, perhaps. In reality, though the militia and Massachusetts minutemen played an important role, especially early in the conflict, most of the major fighting was done by Continental Army regulars, long-term volunteers filling Washington’s ranks. Who fought the war and how it affected them is a story unto itself. War changes society. As John Shy wrote, “the incidence of military service reflects and affects social structure.” That was never more true than during the Revolutionary era.

To understand the challenges and tribulations of waging an eight-year war through the combined efforts of 13 diverse colonies, one must understand a key but often-overlooked fact: Contrary to the linear, triumphalist fairy tales, support for the war and enthusiasm for military service actually consistently declined in the years leading up to the victory at Yorktown in 1781. Of course, one must remember, even as late as 1780, that few would have predicted that victory was likely at all, let alone so near. In this environment of protracted war, in truth it was Continental regulars who performed much of the fighting because militiamen—men of property and some substance—were tied to their farms, families and villages.

This is not to degrade the importance of the militia. They performed vital, short-duration, local service at key points in the war. Furthermore, it was the militia that waged a micro-revolution at the village level, enforcing patriot conformity in the townships and waging a civil war among neighbors.

Since the propertied militias were often unavailable or unwilling, it was to a considerable degree the dregs of society who filled the ranks of the Continental Army. These were the poor, the landless, the immigrants—mostly German and Irish—the former criminals, the wayward youths; those, to be frank, who were most expendable in respectable colonial society. It was the lowest among them who eventually won for the American side. In times since, it has always been thus.

Even so, it was only a tiny fraction of the population that actually experienced extended military service, and these poor souls were paid, if at all, in a currency—continental dollars—that was soon nearly worthless. Due to rampant inflation and the doubtful prospects of an often failing war, between 1777 and 1781 the value of 100 continental dollars fell to less than $2 in gold specie. The poorest of men were fighting for nearly worthless slips of paper. The frustration, and resentment, was palpable. In May 1780, just one year before victory was at hand, Pvt. Joseph Plumb Martin, a seasoned veteran of the Connecticut Line regiments, observed that “the men were exasperated beyond endurance. They could not stand it any longer … here was the army starved and naked, and their country sitting still and expecting the army to do notable things.”

In the winter of 1780-81, matters spiraled out of control and Washington had a veritable crisis on his hands. In January, the Pennsylvania Line mutinied, shot some of the officers and marched on Philadelphia to demand back pay from Congress. Washington and Congress folded and negotiated a settlement. Days later, the New Jersey Line mutinied, and this time Washington sought to create an example. He ordered executions, though, in passive protest, all six members of the appointed firing squad purposely missed their targets. By this point, some 1 in 4 of Washington’s soldiers were in revolt. The army held together, just barely, and would march south to Yorktown, Va., and climactic victory just months later.

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“The American war is over, but this is far from being the case with the American Revolution. On the contrary, nothing but the first act of this great drama is closed.” —Dr. Benjamin Rush (1786)

Sometimes, in hindsight, we readers know too much, are too informed of the outcomes to appreciate the contingency and emotional drama of what unfolded. In this case, the messy experience of an eight-year revolution and war of independence shaped the new American Republic. Through this crucible did 13 colonies cohere, sometimes fragment, and ultimately unite. As the historian Carl Becker wrote, the War of Independence was about more than “home rule”; it was also about “who would rule at home.” John Shy has called the revolution a “political education for the masses,” and indeed it was.

The war itself was messy, and brutal. The stats are instructive: 150,000 to 200,000 colonists performed some military service, about 10 percent of the population; 25,000 Americans perished in the war (about 8,000 in battle, 8,000 of disease, 8,000 on filthy British prison barges), or more than 2 million in today’s terms; 100,000 citizens chose exile over residence in the new republic (60,000 loyalists and 40,000 slaves), or some 8 million in contemporary measures.

So, how did it actually happen—the victory, the colonial victory, that is? How and why did a rabble of patriot colonials ultimately triumph over the British Empire? There are many reasons. The British faced 3,000 miles of ocean to compound their significant logistic and communications challenges. Limited guerrilla warfare contributed to their anguish. Gen. Washington, though he rarely won, managed to keep the Continental Army in the field and in existence.

In a sense, the rebels won because they did not lose. By virtue of their survival they prevailed. This is often the case in popular uprisings, and why it was—and still is—so difficult to pacify a rebellious population with military force. Still, Americans mustn’t forget that there might be no United States without the French, and eventually the Spanish, entry into the war on the patriot side. To a large extent, larger than most Americans are comfortable with, the U.S. owes its independence to France. So, the next time you’re about to insult the French, first give thanks. Without the French army, and more vitally the French navy, transforming our revolution into a global war, the conflict couldn’t have ended when and how it did—with a British army encircled by land and sea on the Virginia coast at Yorktown.

Maybe the Americans could have won without the French, or maybe not, or perhaps it would have taken several more years and the war would have done even more damage to society. What is certain, as John Shy tells us, is this: “a protracted war, especially one so reliant on popular, more or less voluntary military service, is itself a kind of revolution.” In fighting the war, the fighting men, and their families, experienced a revolution of their own.

What, then, in the final sense, can one make of the American Revolution? This much, at least, I’d submit: the Founders were neither the infallible demigods depicted by the contemporary political right, nor, for that matter, pure villains to be pilloried, as some on the left would have it. These were imperfect human beings—men, mostly—striving toward independence and tenuously remaking a society.

Taking into account women, slaves and Indians, the patriot Founders excluded probably 60 to 70 percent of the American population from their dreams of life, liberty and happiness pursued. This does not, though, in itself, erase the beauty of the Founders’ aspirations, words and actions. Rather, I take these salient facts as a warning against all forms of rigid originalism, legal or otherwise—as a warning against the notion that our revolution and forebears ought to remain frozen in their 18th-century moment.

Instead, the imperfection, and ambitions, of the Founders might remind 21st-century Americans to beware the misuse of the past, and to always seek the gradual improvement of society and the achievement of a more perfect union. In that sense, this author agrees with Benjamin Rush that, as he said in 1786, the American Revolution is not over, that naught but a few acts of the great drama have closed. We, today, are waging revolution still.

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To learn more about this topic, consider the following scholarly works:

● James West Davidson, Brian DeLay, Christine Leigh Heyrman, Mark H. Lytle, and Michael B. Stoff, “Experience History: Interpreting America’s Past,” Chapter 7: “The American Revolution, 1775-1783” (2011).

● Alfred Young and Gregory Nobles, “Whose American Revolution Was It? Historians Interpret the Founding” (2011).

● Edward Countryman, “The American Revolution” (1985).

● Gary B. Nash, “The Unknown American Revolution: The Unruly Birth of Democracy and the Struggle to Create America” (2005).

● John Shy, “A People Numerous and Armed: Reflections on the Military Struggle for American Independence,” revised edition (1990).

● Jill Lepore, “The Whites of Their Eyes: The Tea Party’s Revolution and the Battle Over American History” (2010).

Maj. Danny Sjursen, a regular contributor to Truthdig, is a U.S. Army officer and former history instructor at West Point. He served tours with reconnaissance units in Iraq and Afghanistan. He has written a memoir and critical analysis of the Iraq War, “Ghost Riders of Baghdad: Soldiers, Civilians, and the Myth of the Surge.” He lives with his wife and four sons in Lawrence, Kan. Follow him on Twitter at @SkepticalVet and check out his new podcast, “Fortress on a Hill,” co-hosted with fellow vet Chris “Henri” Henrikson.

[The views expressed in this article are those of the author, expressed in an unofficial capacity, and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Army, Department of Defense, or the U.S. government.]

We Are the Corporate Sugar Daddies

As tax day looms, most of us are grumbling and griping about the joyless task of shelling out hard-earned wages to the Empire. Regardless of political perspective, the people are overwhelmingly aware of the fact that whatever taxes they’re paying out, they’re not getting a lot back. In theory, I support taxation. The basic idea being that when people live in a community that requires upkeep and services, the people of that community should all pitch in to make sure those services are of good quality, readily available and reliable. We want good schools, public libraries, healthcare, road maintenance, etc. In other words, we want our family and our neighbor’s families to have what they need to not only survive but to thrive. The problem with our system is that unless your neighbor is one of the Forbes 400 or an F-35, your tax dollars aren’t going to support your neighbors. They’re going to support the people who need it the least: corporate CEOs and the richest in the country. It really is no wonder our public services are so anemic – hardly any of our money goes into them!

According to a Good Jobs First report, from 2000 to 2017, the federal government alone awarded big business $72.3 billion in grants and allocated tax credits. When asked about these obscene tax breaks for big business, politicians and pundits argue that these companies need incentives in order to grow and hire more people – that the extra capital we throw at the capitalist elites will trickle down not only to the workers but to the communities that those workers live in. Well, let’s see how that looks in practice.

As an example, a study released earlier this year by Policy Matters Ohio shows that 10% of Amazon’s Ohio workforce – more than 700 employees – are on food stamps. Besides being hungry, working at Amazon will also make you sick. Emergency responders in Ohio told Bloomberg they visit the factory at least once every day to attend to an injured worker thanks to the sweat-shop style conditions. Needless to say, Amazon isn’t subsidizing emergency services for the local community. But still, Ohio forges ahead. This year, they’ve brokered a deal for three Amazon data centers giving Amazon a 15-year exemption on property and sales taxes worth $77 million, a $4 million offset to payroll costs, and $1.4 million in cash. In return, Amazon only had to commit to 1,000 full-time jobs. It’s also worth noting that those are poverty level jobs.

On a more national scale, since 2000 Amazon has received $1.115 billion in tax credits in 129 communities in the U.S. And get this: Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is worth roughly $100 billion. If you were to shave that down to $99.5 billion, nobody working at any Amazon facility in America would need assistance to eat. But why would Bezos offer that up?! Particularly when he has the power to send cities across the country into a twisted frenzy as to who can pay him more to screw them over. Late last year, Amazon announced it was looking for a place to build its second headquarters, and it wanted to see what it could pull from each place – who’d be willing to do the most for the least. As reported in the New Republic “Worcester, Massachusetts offered a $500 million package that included 100 percent property tax exemptions for the headquarters’ employees. Philadelphia’s price tag was $2 billion. A developer in Irvine, California said he’d pay the entire $5 billion in construction costs himself. Newark, New Jersey upped the ante to $7 billion in tax benefits. Some cities, like Washington, created cringe-worthy promotional videos and performed publicity-seeking stunts. Stonecrest, Georgia tried to one-up all applicants by offering to create a 345-acre city in Amazon’s name.” While mayors and officials will call this incentivizing, what it is is bribery. Not only that, it’s bribery using the people’s money to ultimately screw over the people; dropping hard-won dollars into the pockets of dip-shit billionaires like Bezos instead of into public services.

A report from late 2017 shows that Kentucky now spends more on corporate giveaways than on public pensions. In Baltimore, Maryland billions are shoved into the hands of corporate developers while schools and communities literally fall apart. In early January of this year, a GoFundMe was launched just so schools could turn the heat on. Some 60 schools across the city had heating issues. Meanwhile, corporations can warm themselves with the more than $3 billion in public money they’ve pulled from the city since the 1970s in the form of direct subsidies, tax write-offs, PILOTS or payments in lieu of taxes, and TIFs or tax increment financing.

The idea that turning kids into icicles is worth corporate development and jobs is as insufferable as Maryland winters. But that’s just the tip of the kid-sicle. As Jim Hightower noted in a recent article on the subject of corporate subsidies, “New York gave a $258-million subsidy to Yahoo and got 125 jobs costing taxpayers $2 million per job. Oregon awarded $2 billion to Nike and got 500 jobs. That’s $4 million per job. North Carolina shelled out $321 million to Apple and got 50 jobs. That’s $6.4 million per job. Louisiana handed $234 million to Valero Energy and got 15 jobs. That’s $15.6 million per job.” Furthermore, the Institute for Local Self Reliance found that while Amazon employed 146,000 Americans in 2015 – the corporation has killed 295,000 U.S. retail jobs. And again, those are low-paying and often part-time jobs with no benefits or job security. So despite the hefty price tag per job, the workers and communities aren’t getting much of a return on their investment. In actuality, they’re getting down right shafted. And not just them – us too. A study released earlier this year estimates that taxpayers spent $152.8 billion in 2015 as a result of low wages. That’s money that could easily have come from the corporations themselves. And this isn’t about not wanting to support people who need it, who are struggling. But if they’re only struggling because the corporations we’resubsidizing refuse to pay them fair wages and instead choose to enrich themselves, we’re not actually supporting people. We’re supporting – and giving raises to – the companies who refuse to support their workers. No one working for a multi-billion dollar corporation should be struggling to pay their bills. No one.

When it comes to energy companies, the story is only different in that it’s worse, both economically and ecologically. Oil Change International released a report last fall showing that “US fossil fuel production is subsidized to the tune of $20 billion annually.” That’s 20 billion going straight from your wages to the pockets of oil and gas tycoons that poison our land, air and water. And when it’s time to clean up spills or pay for illnesses or injuries sustained by their workers and the communities they operate in, oh geez – just can’t seem to find the cash. That burden, once again, falls on us. Still, this story isn’t that much different than the previous ones. However, with energy, manufacturing and agricultural industries around the world, there’s another economic and ecological burden that falls on we, the people. In April 2013, Trucost and The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity program released a report outlining the “unpriced natural capital” consumed by the world’s top industries. “Natural capital” refers to ecological materials and services like, say, clean water or a stable atmosphere; “unpriced” means that businesses don’t pay to consume them. The report ranked so-called region sectors based on their natural capital impacts. A region-sector refers to a specific industry in a specific area of the world. So, for example, cattle ranching and farming in South America. In this case, the greatest natural capital consumed by this region sector is land – i.e. clearing out huge swaths of the Amazon rainforest in order to graze cattle. The ranching industry of course doesn’t pay for the ecological costs of deforestation because if they had to, they’d be in the hole nearly $300 billion. The natural capital cost of deforestation is $312.1 billion. The revenue from the cattle ranching and farming industry is only $16.6 billion. And while this monetary gap is humongous, the negative income finding was ubiquitous. Not only did the report find that unpriced natural capital costs the world $7.3 trillion a year but that “of the top 20 region-sectors ranked by environmental impacts, none would be profitable if environmental costs were fully integrated.” In other words, the world’s top industries destroy the planet and we not only pay them to do so but we pay for the various and expensive effects of that destruction. The industrial behemoths of our world: coal, meat, natural gas, oil, logging – NONE of them would be in the black if they actually had to pay for the destruction they cause.

Between federal and state subsidies, government welfare and ecological fallout, we pay corporations two, sometimes three times over under the guise of boosting the economy. Predictably, however, the only things boosted are corporate profits, income inequality and ecological disaster. Companies like Amazon pit communities against each other and then watch the scuffle like a sadist watches malnourished dogs fight over poisoned scraps. We rip ourselves, our communities and our entire economy apart for the sake of sustaining an unsustainable system. We are the corporate sugar daddies – and until we stop subsidizing the biggest, dirtiest, shadiest and most evil corporations, we will continue to be screwed by them.

Donald Trump: The Un-American President

The story of America is the story of immigrants. Almost every one of us can trace our bloodlines back to a people who arrived on these shores from other soils.

The tapestry of our nation was woven by the toils of newcomers and dyed by the blood of forced labor. All of us are byproducts of a hope that past generations had for their children. Apple pie and baseball take back seats to the narratives of foreigners who made a new home here—there is nothing more American than immigrants.

Therefore, when Donald Trump takes to the podium to demonize immigrants and spew xenophobia into the public square, he is spitting on the foundation of our nation. A man who got elected president promising to make America great again is vilifying the people who made America great.

There is irony to all this. Trump’s grandfather Fredrick was an immigrant who left Germany when he was just 16 years old. He boarded a steamship and arrived in New York in 1885. Fred moved in with his sister and started working as a barber the next day. After cutting hair and trimming beards for six years, he had saved enough money to move to the West Coast and open a restaurant.

If this story sounds familiar, that is because Fred’s journey is the typical immigrant story. Donald Trump was bestowed fortunes from his father only because his immigrant father once tasted the life of a migrant worker in New York. Of course, Donald knows this all too well; his mean-spirited attacks on Mexicans and Muslims is nothing more than a malicious ploy to cater to the bigotry of some of his most spiteful loyalists.

One can understand zealots who are driven to hatred out of brokenness. What is harder to forgive is Trump’s calculated dog whistling as he smears immigrants as exotic outsiders who don’t belong here. A reality show jester who thinks every occasion is a deal waiting to be leveraged, he intentionally blows fire on the political and social discourse in order to keep his name on our lips.

He changes positions on a whim in order to maximize his ratings. When he was in blue New York, Trump was a liberal’s liberal. Now that his fortunes depend on sectarian Kool-Aid drinkers on the right, he pivoted on a dime as he transformed from Jimmy Carter lite to uber-Strom Thurmond overnight. Comparing Trump’s videos from 2008 and now will give your jawbones a workout, your mouth gaping as you hear him praising Hillary Clinton a decade ago and now portraying her as Medusa.

Putting aside Trump’s duplicity, it is incumbent on Americans to be united in our rebuke of his hostility toward immigrants. Patriotism is not sloganeering. You can’t make America great again by maligning the people who made it so. The pilgrims who landed at Plymouth Rock were undocumented migrants who survived thanks to the grace of Native Americans. Our nation was enriched thanks to the blood and sacrifice of millions of coerced migrants from Africa. America was connected thanks to the toil of Chinese railroad workers. Great cities like New York, Chicago and others owe their existence to the labor of European immigrants.

Our nation is a testament to the immigrant experience. While I understand the need for an immigration framework, we can arrive at a solution of a fair and equitable immigration system without marginalizing people who come to America with hope for a new future as Donald Trump’s grandfather once did.

These issues are personal for me. I arrived in America as a 7-year-old after my family fled my homeland of Ethiopia to escape the Red Terror in the late 1970s that took the lives of at least 200,000 Ethiopians. We came here with few possessions. My dad worked three jobs concurrently to pay the bills and keep a roof over our heads. He died of lung cancer in 2001, and I am sure the strain he put on his body through the years played a large part in his eventual death.

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When Donald Trump insults immigrants and impishly disparages people who seek refuge in America, he’s really insulting my father and besmirching the memory of his own grandfather. Beyond that, defaming immigrants is a direct attack on all of us. When political leaders start otherizing and turning people into abstractions, what starts as an attack against a few eventually becomes an inferno that engulfs many.

We would do well to remember the story of Germany in the 1920s and ’30s. First, they came for the undesirables. Then, calamity came for all.

Gaza Buries Journalist Killed While Covering Mass Protests

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Hundreds attended the funeral of a well-known Palestinian journalist in Gaza on Saturday who was killed while covering mass protests along the Israeli border the previous day.

Yasser Murtaja died from a gunshot wound he sustained while filming Friday in an area engulfed in thick black smoke from protesters setting tires on fire. Israeli troops opened fire from across the border, killing at least nine Palestinians and wounding 491 others in the second mass border protest in eight days. The deaths brought to at least 31 the number of Palestinians killed by Israeli fire since last week. The border area appeared calm Saturday.

Witnesses said Murtaja was over 100 meters (yards) from the border, wearing a flak jacket marked “press” and holding his camera when he was shot in an exposed area just below the armpit.

The Israeli military has said it fired only at “instigators” involved in attacks on soldiers and was investigating Murtaja’s death amid a very hectic environment.

“The IDF (Israel Defense Forces) uses means such as warnings, riot dispersal means, and as a last resort firing live rounds in a precise, measured way,” it said Saturday. “The IDF does not intentionally target journalists. The circumstances in which journalists were allegedly hit by IDF fire are not familiar to the IDF, and are being looked into.”

Hamas, which has ruled Gaza since a 2007 takeover and calls for Israel’s destruction, has called for a series of protests until May 15, the anniversary of Israel’s founding when Palestinians commemorate their mass uprooting during the 1948 war over Israel’s creation.

The Islamic group hopes the mass protests can create pressure to break a border blockade enforced by Israel and Egypt since 2007, without having to succumb to demands that it disarm. The blockade has made it increasingly difficult for Hamas to govern. It has also devastated Gaza’s economy, made it virtually impossible for people to enter and exit the territory, and left residents with just a few hours of electricity a day.

Israel argues that Hamas could have ended the suffering of Gaza’s 2 million people by disarming and renouncing violence.

It says Hamas is exploiting the mass marches as a cover for attacking the border fence, and has vowed to prevent a breach at all costs. The military said that on Friday protesters hurled several explosive devices and firebombs, using the thick plumes of smoke from burning tires as cover, and that several attempts to cross the fence were thwarted.

Colleagues said Murtaja was not affiliated with Hamas or any other militant group, and there were no Hamas symbols normally seen at the funerals for militants.

In an apparent sign of solidarity, Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh attended the funeral Saturday.

“The Return March is a battle of truth and awareness,” Haniyeh said of the protests. “Yasser held his camera to direct the arrows of truth to convey the image of the besieged people.”

At the funeral, Murtaja’s body was draped in a Palestinian flag with his flak jacket reading “press” placed upon him as he was carried through the streets of Gaza. The drone he had used for shooting footage of Gaza hovered above to film his funeral. Dozens of his close friends and colleagues were sobbing after the coffin was taken out of the morgue.

Murtaja, 30, was the co-founder of Ain media, a local TV production company that has done projects, including aerial drone video, for foreign media clients such as the BBC and Al Jazeera English. He was one of the first to bring a drone camera into Gaza and his images captivated many of its residents who have never seen Gaza from above since it has no airport or skyscrapers.

His death, along with the other recent casualties, seemed likely to draw renewed criticism from rights groups that have branded Israel’s open-fire orders on the border as unlawful, after Israel’s defense minister warned that those approaching the fence were risking their lives.

Three other journalists sustained tear gas injuries and at least one cameraman a gunshot in his leg, health ministry and media activists reported.

AIDA, a network of more than 70 non-government organizations operating in the Palestinian territories, condemned Saturday what they called “the unlawful killing of civilians” Friday. It follows accusations from the United Nations’ human rights office that it has indications of Israeli forces using “excessive force” the previous week.

The European Union on Saturday issued a statement saying Friday’s violence “raises serious questions about the proportionate use of force which must be addressed.”

Witnesses described the area in which Murtaja and others were shot as a chaotic scene in which protesters torched large piles of tires, engulfing the area in black smoke that was meant to shield them from Israeli snipers. Footage showed that visibility was limited and the faces of some of the activists were covered with black soot.

Israeli troops on the other side of the fence responded with tear gas, rubber-coated steel pellets and water cannons, as well as occasional live fire. Footage taken of the wounded journalist shortly after he was shot shows medics frantically bandaging his chest and trying to connect an IV drip. Murtaja himself is seen moving his head from side to side and talking to those around him before he is placed on a stretcher and taken to an ambulance.

Just two weeks ago, Murtaja posted a drone photo of Gaza’s seaport at sunset on his Facebook page with the following caption: “I wished I could take this photo from the sky, not from land. My name is Yasser Murtaja, I am 30 years old. I live in Gaza City. I have never traveled.”

Friends say it reflected his greatest wish — to escape Gaza’s isolation.

Hana Awad, his colleague and close friend, said he had long dreamt of traveling and was recently granted an Al Jazeera scholarship for training in Doha. She described him as active and friendly and not at all interested in politics.

“We didn’t know his political views, he was passionate about his job and wanted to travel and learn,” she said of Murtaja, who was the father of a 2-year-old boy.

____

Mohammed Daraghmeh contributed from Ramallah, West Bank.

China Applies Own Maximum-Pressure Policy on Pyongyang

TOKYO — As the U.S.-North Korea summit looms, President Donald Trump’s maximum pressure policy on North Korea may be working — thanks to China.

Beijing appears to have gone well beyond U.N. sanctions on its unruly neighbor, reducing its total imports from North Korea in the first two months this year by 78.5 and 86.1 percent in value — a decline that began in late 2017, according to the latest trade data from China. Its exports to the North also dropped by 33 percent to 34 percent both months.

The figures suggest that instead of being sidelined while North Korean leader Kim Jong Un made his surprising diplomatic overtures to Seoul and Washington, China’s sustained game of hardball on trade with Pyongyang going back at least five months may have been the decisive factor in forcing Kim’s hand.

Trade with China is absolutely crucial to North Korea’s survival.

It accounts for the largest share of the North’s dealings with the outside world and provides a lifeline to many of the necessities Pyongyang relies on to keep its nation fed and its economy from breaking down. Estimates vary, but it is believed that roughly half of all transactions in the North Korean economy are made in foreign currencies, with the Chinese yuan being the most common.

That gives Beijing tremendous leverage, though for political and national security reasons it has generally been reluctant to exert too much pressure on Pyongyang.

That reluctance is clearly wearing thin.

The statistics need to be taken with a dose of caution. Neither country is known for its commitment to transparency. Even so, more specific data reveal an even tougher, targeted crackdown, according to Alex Wolf, a senior emerging markets economist with Aberdeen Standard Investments:

— China’s exports of refined petroleum have collapsed over the past five months — to an annual rate of less than 4 percent of what it exported last year. With the pace on a downward trend, he believes, total exports could actually fall further.

— North Korean steel imports from China have also collapsed in 2018, and the same goes for cars. Wolf notes that it’s unclear if China is blocking such exports or North Korea simply can’t afford them. But either one, he wrote in a recent report for the company, would be a clear signal the North’s economy is “under a great deal of stress.”

“While China’s role over the past few months has often been overlooked or little understood, it appears a strategy could be emerging: China wants to play a central role in ‘resolving’ this crisis, but wants to do it on its own terms,” he wrote. “It’s increasingly clear that Chinese pressure is a driving force and China will play a central role in any future talks.”

Kim announced in his New Year’s address he would reach out to the South to ease tensions on the Korean Peninsula. He then agreed to hold a summit with South Korean President Moon Jae-in on April 27 and with Trump after that. But to the surprise of many, Kim suddenly showed up in Beijing first for a summit with President Xi Jinping last month, underscoring the continued primacy of China in North Korea’s foreign relationships.

Lu Chao, director of the Border Study Institute at the Liaoning Academy of Social Sciences, noted that China accounts for almost 80 percent of the North’s total trade, meaning the onus for implementing U.N. sanctions has been mainly borne by Beijing, whose enforcement has created “huge pressure on North Korea.”

“There is no doubt China is doing more than ever when it comes to sanctions,” he said, adding restrictions on sales of textile and seafood products to North Korea imposed by China last autumn “have dealt a huge blow to the country.”

“China has played a very important role in promoting the current change of the situation,” he said.

The decrease in trade isn’t just about politics.

China’s economy is also dealing with overproduction in many industries and its demand for North Korean imports is low. Efforts at joint development projects have languished and difficulties suffered by Chinese firms in North Korea — especially problems receiving payment — have soured enthusiasm for cross-border trade.

But the deficit presents an obvious dilemma for the Kim regime: the more it depletes its foreign reserves by buying in excess of what it sells, the less money it has to buy anything at all. Normally, that would lead to inflation — and even hyperinflation — as imported necessities become scarcer and people who can afford to do so dump their holdings in the local currency to buy safer U.S. dollars or Chinese yuan.

Georgetown University economist William Brown said he believes the North’s current account deficit has risen dramatically since the strengthening last November of sanctions on North Korean exports by China, which he said are by now “certainly biting.”

“Why is Kim venturing his offer now? My impression is he is feeling very strong pressure from China’s virtual embargo on North Korea’s exports, and what he must see as a gradual ratcheting down of needed imports, even petroleum,” Brown wrote in a recent blog post. “This is an enormous economic hit of a sort the country has never had to deal with on this scale.”

Brown believes an important indicator of the North’s economic health will be movement of the unofficial but widely used exchange rate for the North Korean currency, which has been surprisingly stable at around 8,000 to the U.S. dollar for years but should now be under intense inflationary pressure.

“China is giving us the chance, and (we should) use it cleverly to get what we want out of the nuclear program and systemic reform,” he added. “It’s not so impossible if you realize everyone, even young Kim, can benefit.”

___

Associated Press researcher Yu Bing in Beijing contributed to this report. Talmadge is the AP’s Pyongyang bureau chief.

Republican Abruptly Quits U.S. House in Face of Sexual Allegations

WASHINGTON—Texas Republican Rep. Blake Farenthold abruptly resigned Friday, four months after announcing he wouldn’t seek re-election amid sexual harassment allegations.

“While I planned on serving out the remainder of my term in Congress, I know in my heart it’s time for me to move along and look for new ways to serve,” Farenthold said in a video statement, adding that his action was effective as of 5 p.m.

In December, Farenthold had posted another video denying a former aide’s 2014 accusations, including that he’d subjected her to sexually suggestive comments and behavior and then fired her after she complained. Still, the congressman apologized in that video for an office atmosphere he said included “destructive gossip, offhand comments, off-color jokes and behavior that, in general, was less than professional.”

Capitol Hill has found itself in the center of a national reckoning over sexual misconduct and gender discrimination in the workplace. Since October, eight lawmakers have either resigned or abandoned re-election bids amid allegations of sexual misconduct. Some members and aides have complained about a patchwork system for reporting offenses and secrecy around settlements paid by lawmakers’ offices.

A ninth lawmaker, Rep. Elizabeth Esty, announced on Monday she will not seek re-election this year amid calls for her resignation over her handling of the firing of a former chief of staff accused of harassment, threats and violence against female staffers in her congressional office.

Esty, a Democrat from Connecticut and an outspoken #MeToo advocate, made the announcement not to seek a fourth term in the November election days after apologizing for not protecting her employees from the male ex-chief of staff.

The lawsuit by former Farenthold aide Lauren Greene alleged that the congressman had discussed his sexual fantasies about her and said at a staff meeting that a lobbyist had propositioned him for a threesome. It accused Farenthold of repeatedly complimenting her appearance, then joking that he hoped the comments wouldn’t be construed as sexual harassment.

Farenthold, a seven-year House veteran from Corpus Christi, had said he’d engaged in no wrongdoing when he settled the case in 2015. But after congressional sources said he’d paid the $84,000 settlement using taxpayer money, public focus intensified. Farenthold has promised to reimburse the Treasury Department for the cost of the settlement, but hasn’t done so yet.

In an ominous sign for Farenthold, the head of the House GOP’s campaign committee said in a statement Friday that he hopes Farenthold is “true to his word and pays back the $84,000 of taxpayer money he used as a settlement.”

Rep. Steve Stivers of Ohio, the GOP campaign chief, added that “Congress must hold ourselves to a higher standard and regain the trust of the American people.”

Two Republicans, former Texas Water Board official Bech Bruun and ex-Victoria County Republican Party Chairman Michael Cloud, are squaring off in a May 22 primary runoff to succeed him.

A businessman and self-described radio sidekick who was new to politics, Farenthold upset long-serving Democratic U.S. Rep. Solomon Ortiz during the tea party wave of 2010. But his district has since been redrawn to make it more reliably Republican — including removing many areas along the Texas-Mexico border which had favored Democrats.

In Friday’s video, Farenthold thanked his staff for its hard work and his family for its support while saying: “Leaving my service in the House, I’m able to look back on the entirety of my career in public service and say it was well worthwhile.”

“I look forward to staying in touch with everyone,” Farenthold said. “It’s been an honor and a privilege to serve.”

___

Weissert reported from Austin, Texas.

2nd Amendment Doesn’t Protect Assault Weapons, Federal Judge Rules

BOSTON—Assault weapons and large-capacity magazines are not protected by the Second Amendment, a federal judge said in a ruling Friday upholding Massachusetts’ ban on the weapons.

U.S. District Judge William Young dismissed a lawsuit challenging the 20-year-old ban, saying assault weapons are military firearms that fall beyond the reach of the constitutional right to “bear arms.”

Regulation of the weapons is a matter of policy, not for the courts, he said.

“Other states are equally free to leave them unregulated and available to their law-abiding citizens,” Young said. “These policy matters are simply not of constitutional moment. Americans are not afraid of bumptious, raucous and robust debate about these matters. We call it democracy.”

State Attorney General Maura Healey said the ruling “vindicates the right of the people of Massachusetts to protect themselves from these weapons of war.”

“Strong gun laws save lives, and we will not be intimidated by the gun lobby in our efforts to end the sale of assault weapons and protect our communities and schools,” Healey, a Democrat, said in a statement. “Families across the country should take heart in this victory.”

AR-15 assault-style rifles are under increased scrutiny because of their use in several recent mass shootings, including the February massacre at a Florida high school that left 17 people dead.

The Gun Owners’ Action League of Massachusetts and other groups that filed the lawsuit argued that the AR-15 cannot be considered a “military weapon” because it cannot fire in fully automatic mode.

But Young dismissed that argument, noting that the semi-automatic AR-15’s design is based on guns “that were first manufactured for military purposes” and that the AR-15 is “common and well-known in the military.”

“The AR-15 and its analogs, along with large capacity magazines, are simply not weapons within the original meaning of the individual constitutional right to ‘bear arms,'” Young wrote.

Young also upheld Healey’s 2016 enforcement notice to gun sellers and manufacturers clarifying what constitutes a “copy” or “duplicate” weapon under the state’s 1998 assault weapon ban, including copies of the Colt AR-15 and the Kalashnikov AK-47.

Healey’s stepped-up enforcement followed the shooting rampage at a nightclub in Orlando, Florida, that killed 49 patrons. She said at the time that gun manufacturers were circumventing Massachusetts’ ban by selling copycat versions of the weapons they claimed complied with the law.

The Massachusetts assault weapons ban mirrors the federal ban that expired in 2004. It prohibits the sale of specific and name-brand weapons and explicitly bans copies or duplicates of those weapons.

The National Rifle Association panned the ruling and pledged to help the groups fighting the case “in any way possible.”

“As long as politicians and judicial officials continue to flout the law in order to advance a political agenda, the five million members of the NRA will be here to hold them accountable,” the group’s Institute for Legislative Action said in a statement.

Jim Wallace, executive director of the Massachusetts gun owners group, said Young’s upholding of Healey’s crackdown on copycat assault weapons gives the attorney general “unbridled authority” to interpret laws as she pleases.

“Everyone in the state should be really concerned about that,” Wallace said. “What if the next attorney general isn’t a friend on one of your issues?”

Wallace said he couldn’t yet say whether the group will appeal the decision.

The U.S. Supreme Court has blocked local governments from banning handguns and ruled that the Second Amendment allows Americans to have guns in their homes for self-defense.

But the court last year turned away an appeal from Maryland gun owners who challenged the state’s ban on assault weapons.

___

Follow Alanna Durkin Richer at http://twitter.com/aedurkinricher. Read more of her work at http://bit.ly/2hIhzDb.

Death Count Among Palestinians Rises as Thousands Protest in Gaza

KHUZAA, Gaza Strip—Thousands of Palestinians protested along Gaza’s sealed border with Israel on Friday, engulfing the volatile area in black smoke from burning tires to try to block the view of Israeli snipers and cheering a Hamas strongman who pledged that the border fence will eventually fall.

Israeli troops opened fire from across the border, killing at least nine Palestinians and wounding 491 others — 33 of them seriously — in the second mass border protest in a week, Gaza health officials said. A well-known Palestinian journalist was among the dead, and hundreds of others suffered other injuries, including tear gas inhalation, the officials said.

The deaths brought to at least 31 the number of Palestinians killed by Israeli fire since last week.

Early Saturday, Palestinian health officials confirmed that Yasser Murtaga had died from a gunshot wound sustained while covering demonstrations near the Israeli border in Khuzaa. The area was the scene of large protests Friday, and was covered in thick black smoke.

Murtaga was over 100 meters (yards) from the border, wearing a flak jacket marked “press” and holding his camera when he was shot in an exposed area just below the armpit. Journalists were in the area as protesters were setting tires on fire.

The Israeli military has said it fired only at “instigators” involved in attacks on soldiers or the border fence. It had no immediate comment.

Murtaga worked for Ain media, a local TV production company that has done projects, including aerial drone video, for foreign media. He was not affiliated with Hamas or any other militant group.

The latest casualties were bound to draw new criticism from rights groups that have branded Israel’s open-fire orders on the border as unlawful, after Israel’s defense minister warned that those approaching the fence were risking their lives.

The U.N. human rights office said Friday that it has indications that Israeli forces used “excessive force” against protesters last week, when 15 Palestinians were killed or later died of wounds sustained near the border.

An Israeli military spokesman defended the rules of engagement.

“If they are actively attacking the fence, if they are throwing a molotov cocktail that is within striking distance of Israeli troops or similar activities, then those persons, those rioters, become, may become, a target,” said Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus.

Friday’s large crowds suggested that Hamas, the Islamic militant group that has ruled Gaza since a 2007 takeover, might be able to keep the momentum going in the next few weeks. Hamas has called for a series of protests until May 15, the anniversary of Israel’s founding when Palestinians commemorate their mass uprooting during the 1948 war over Israel’s creation.

Israel has alleged that Hamas is using the mass marches as a cover for attacking the border fence, and has vowed to prevent a breach at all costs.

The military said that on Friday, protesters hurled several explosive devices and firebombs, using the thick plumes of smoke from burning tires as a cover, and that several attempts to cross the fence were thwarted.

Gaza’s shadowy Hamas strongman, Yehiyeh Sinwar, told a cheering crowd in one of the protest camps Friday that a border breach is coming.

The world should “wait for our great move, when we penetrate the borders and pray at Al-Aqsa,” Sinwar said, referring to the major Muslim shrine in Jerusalem.

He was interrupted several times by the crowd, who chanted, “We are going to Jerusalem, millions of martyrs!” and “God bless you Sinwar!”

The mass protests are perhaps Hamas’ last chance to break a border blockade enforced by Israel and Egypt since 2007, without having to succumb to demands that it disarm. The blockade has made it increasingly difficult for Hamas to govern. It has also devastated Gaza’s economy, made it virtually impossible for people to enter and exit the territory, and left residents with just a few hours of electricity a day.

Israel argues that Hamas could have ended the suffering of Gaza’s 2 million people by disarming and renouncing violence.

Friday’s marches began before Muslim noon prayers when thousands of Palestinians streamed to five tent encampments that organizers had set up several hundred meters (yards) from the border fence.

In one camp near the border community of Khuzaa, smaller groups of activists moved closer to the fence after the prayers. Demonstrators torched large piles of tires, engulfing the area in black smoke meant to shield them from Israeli snipers; the faces of some of the activists were covered in black soot.

Israeli troops on the other side of the fence responded with live fire, tear gas, rubber-coated steel pellets and water cannons.

After the first tires started burning, several young men with gunshot wounds began arriving at a field clinic at the camp.

Mohammed Ashour, 20, who had been among the first to set tires on fire, was shot in the right arm.

“We came here because we want dignity,” he said resting on a stretcher before paramedics transported him to the strip’s main hospital.

Yehia Abu Daqqa, a 20-year-old student, said he had come to honor those killed in previous protests.

“Yes, there is fear,” he said of the risks of advancing toward the fence. “We are here to tell the occupation that we are not weak.”

The death toll since last week includes at least 24 people killed during the two Friday protests at the border, as well as one killed during a protest on Tuesday. The six other deaths include three Palestinian gunmen killed in what Israel said were attempts to attack the border fence and three men who were struck by Israeli tank fire.

Speaking at U.N. headquarters in New York, Palestinian U.N. Ambassador Riyad Mansour put the death toll for Friday’s protest at nine; the discrepancy between that figure and the death toll provided by the Gaza Health Ministry could not immediately be explained.

More than 1,000 people suffered a range of injuries on Friday, including those hit by live fire and those overcome by tear gas, the Gaza health ministry said. Twelve women and 48 minors were among those hurt, the officials said.

At the United Nations, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged all parties to exercise maximum restraint, said U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric.

He said U.N. Mideast envoy Nickolay Mladenov had been in touch with Israeli and Palestinian officials to reinforce “the need to allow people to demonstrate peacefully.” Mladenov stressed the need to ensure that “excessive force is not used, and the need to ensure that children are not deliberately put in harm’s way,” Dujarric said.

For a second week in a row, the United States blocked a U.N. Security Council statement supporting the right of Palestinians to demonstrate peacefully and endorsing Guterres’ call for an independent investigation into the deadly protests in Gaza.

Palestinian U.N. Ambassador Riyad Mansour told reporters at U.N. headquarters in New York Friday evening that 14 of the 15 council nations agreed to the statement, but the U.S., Israel’s closest ally, objected.

A White House envoy urged Palestinians to stay away from the fence. Jason Greenblatt said the United States condemns “leaders and protesters who call for violence or who send protesters — including children — to the fence, knowing that they may be injured or killed.”

Hamas has billed the final protest, set for May 15, as the “Great March of Return” of Palestinian refugees and their descendants, implying they would try to enter Israel. Two-thirds of Gaza’s residents are descendants of refugees.

Palestinians commemorate May 15 as their “nakba,” or catastrophe, when hundreds of thousands were uprooted from homes in what is now Israel.

__

Daraghmeh reported from Ramallah, West Bank. Associated Press writers Karin Laub in Ramallah, Ian Deitch in Jerusalem, Josef Federman on the Gaza border and Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations contributed to this report.

Amid School Closures, Puerto Rico’s Teachers Fight Privatization

Puerto Rico’s Department of Education announced Thursday it will close 283 schools this summer after a sharp drop in enrollment, thought to be partly a result of displacement of families after Hurricane Maria. However, many teachers in the island’s school system say the issue might be more complicated and believe the system’s recent acceptance of charter schools and voucher programs could be contributing to the deprioritizing of public schools.

The Associated Press reports that Puerto Rico is currently operating 1,100 public schools with 319,000 enrolled students.

Puerto Rico’s Education Secretary Julia Keleher said of the closings, “We know it’s a difficult and painful process. For this reason, we’ve done it in the most sensible way, taking in consideration all the elements that could impact the daily lives of some families and the school communities in general. … Our boys and girls deserve the best education that we are capable of giving them, taking into account the fiscal reality of Puerto Rico.”

CNN continues:

Before Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico on September 20, there already was an unprecedented migration from the Caribbean island to the mainland United States — at least in part because of the US commonwealth’s financial crisis.

The hurricane left millions of Puerto Ricans without power or running water. Schools were closed and jobs lost. Puerto Ricans are American citizens and can move to the states without visas or other paperwork. And so, many did.

In 2016, there were about 2 million more Puerto Ricans living in the mainland United States than in the US territory.

Some critics have voiced concern that public school closures are being used as cover for a total overhaul of Puerto Rico’s education system. Lawmakers and the island’s governor recently approved legislation to allow charter schools and voucher programs throughout the territory, and in response, a teachers union filed a lawsuit aiming to stop the island from further privatizing its school system. Education Week reports:

…the union has argued that taken together, the new law and separate fiscal reforms will cost teachers jobs, hurt students, and dismember the island’s public education system, which currently serves about 320,000 students.

“To say charters are public schools when they are going to be administered, directed and controlled by private hands is clearly an illegal and unconstitutional contradiction,” union President Aida Diaz told the AP.

In tweets discussing their suit, the union referred to charters as “vultures” and said that the law would privatize public education on the island.

Diaz, whose union represents some 30,000 teachers, said in a statement to the Associated Press, “The damage that the Secretary of Education is doing to children, youth and their parents is immeasurable.”

Teachers opposing the closures have expressed concerns about, among other issues, transportation and special needs children. According to The Associated Press, an estimated 30 percent of Puerto Rican students receive specialized education, about twice the average on the U.S. mainland.

Edwin Morales, who heads a teachers union, was arrested after breaking into the Education Department building to ask questions about the decision to allow charter schools and vouchers. According to PBS NewsHour, Morales says Hurricane Maria is being used as a pretext to replace the public system with charter schools and introduce private investment to education. He said, “We are talking about vouchers. We are talking about charter schools. We are talking about the possibility of firing teachers that, for us as a union, doesn’t help the island to recover.”

Puerto Rican education officials have been seeking input from the U.S. mainland on how to implement charter schools. Robert Enlow, president of EdChoice, a charter school advocacy organization, said, “We’re trying to help them understand what’s been going on in other states, how states have run [choice programs], what the rules are, what the benefits and the challenges have been.”

Imperialist America, 50 Years After MLK’s Gospel of Nonviolence

The line of preachers stretched 100 yards to the door of Columbus, Georgia’s radio station WOKS, where the pastors had each been allotted a few minutes to testify to their deep commitment to the ideals espoused by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., shot down in Memphis three days earlier. Nearly every Black minister in town was there, waiting his turn to lie. Although they would sound like an amen corner for “the Movement” on this mournful Sunday morning, the assembled clergymen had, in fact, acted as the front line of resistance to King’s gospel of nonviolent confrontation with the white powers-that-be.

Both before and after the tumultuous Birmingham campaign of 1963, Dr. King and his Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) had hoped to bring the movement to Columbus, the second-largest city in Georgia, 100 miles due south of Atlanta. The protocols of Black Baptist behavior, however, required that ministers first receive an invitation from a local congregation before setting up shop in someone else’s city. All 100 of Columbus’ Black churches shut their doors on Dr. King, rejecting any outside interference in their long accommodation with white supremacy.

The same solid phalanx of Jim Crowed preachers kept King out of Georgia’s other large cities: Macon, Augusta, and Savannah. Indeed, Dr. King’s early southern campaign itinerary was shaped primarily by the places he was locked out of—ultimately, almost everywhere except small backwaters like Albany, Georgia and St. Augustine Florida.

The myth of the “Black Church” as the central player in the huge social transformations of the 1960s begins with the false testimonials that poured from pulpits and Black radio microphones on that Sunday, April 7, 1968—and have soiled the historical record ever since. Accommodation with Power—not transformation or liberation—was the watchword of the Black church, then as now. King and his SCLC were a rogue faction of dissident Baptists in a sea of petty capitalist hustlers in clerical collars whose mission was to reconcile Black people to life under apartheid.

I watched with disgust as the Uncle Tom preachers composed their mini-sermons for the radio microphone. An 18-year-old paratrooper with the 82nd Airborne Division, stationed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, I had been on field exercises with my unit the week before, providing security for the commanding general’s headquarters. Under a big tent, company commanders and their executive officers spent that Wednesday, April 3, poring over maps of Washington, DC, in the event we had to occupy the city. When King was killed on the evening of the next day, the division hastily packed its gear and moved back to barracks to prepare for deployment to burning cities. The general, however, somehow forgot to restrict all 12,000 of us to base. Some of us took advantage of the oversight, and went home for the weekend.

When I and hundreds of other paratroopers straggled back to Fort Bragg early Monday morning, April 8, the rest of my unit was sitting on an airfield near Baltimore, as the brass tried to decide whether we should be deployed in that city or nearby Washington. Both were burning, along with over 100 other cities. We wound up in the nation’s capital.

The year before, Newark, New Jersey, had been occupied by nearly lily-white units of the National Guard, sent there to quell a four-day rebellion in which 26 Blacks were killed. The Guardsmen behaved like an Army of White Vengeance, joining the racist cops in savaging Black people and shooting up businesses displaying “Black-owned” and “Soul Brother” signs on the Springfield Avenue thoroughfare. However, the 82nd Airborne Division was a different social organism, entirely; our ranks were 60 percent Black, and we had been transformed. All of us (at least in my company) were aware of what had happened in Newark. As far as the Black troops were concerned, our division had only one mission in Washington, DC: to make sure the white soldiers—especially the mostly white military police—did no harm to the Black population. And they did not dare. Not one Black citizen of Washington was hurt by a soldier of the 82nd Airborne division—or, to my knowledge, even verbally abused—during the occupation.

Our officers took note, and were clearly disturbed by our protective postures. The same Black ghetto army that was rebelling in Vietnam, was showing that it would not be a party to abuse of Black people at home. It was the beginning of the end of the draft.

Dr. King’s April 4, 1967, anti-war speech at New York’s Riverside Church likely began the countdown to his assassination. A year later, as the fires of Black rage at King’s murder burned in the nation’s capital, it was dawning on the top brass that the entire institutional structure of the U.S. Armed Forces had to be scrapped. Not only was the genocidal U.S. imperial project in Vietnam doomed, but there must never again be allowed to arise a critical mass of Black ghetto soldiers to dominate the ranks of combat units—men that fought pitched gun battles with military police outfits in Da Nang and other posts, burned down the military stockades at Long Bihn and Da Nang, and fragged (blew up with grenades) countless officers and sargeants. (See “Fear of a ‘Black Street Army,’” The Black Commentator, July 3 2003, and “No Draft No Peace: Rangel and Conyers Are Right” July 9, 2003, The Black Commentator.)

The Pentagon is the biggest booster of the all-volunteer Army, which allows it to socially engineer its globe-straddling foreign legions, now heavily weighted with whites from “Nowhereville, USA.” The 80,000 strong Joint Special Operations Command—the cutting edge of the imperial war machine, almost as large as the entire French army—is overwhelmingly white.

“We don’t want a draft,” said President Obama’s Defense Secretary, Ashton Carter. “We don’t want people chosen for us. We want to pick people. That’s what the all-volunteer force is all about. That’s why the all-volunteer force is so excellent.”

Excellent for imperialism. Although Blacks still make up about a fifth of the U.S. military, they are now clustered in support units, rather than combat line positions. My old paratroop division, the 82nd Airborne, is now the whitest unit in the Army—the better to project the power of white capital to all corners of the world.

The week that began with the murder of fervently anti-war Dr. Martin Luther King is but a snapshot in time. Yet there is no reason to believe that Dr. King would have abandoned his pro-peace (and “democratic socialist”) principles if he were alive today, at age 89. King was a student of Gandhi and Marx long before he led his first demonstration.

The same social forces prevail as during MLK’s time. The Democrats are still a wing of the Greater War Party, nowadays screaming louder than the Republicans for confrontation with nuclear Russia. The Black Misleadership Class was already emerging in much its current, self-serving form when King was alive. The first Black big city mayor, Cleveland’s Carl Stokes, elected in 1967, appointed Black Air Force general Daniel “Chappie” James Public Safety Director. The General promptly issued “dum-dum” hollow point bullets to the cops. Maynard Jackson, elected mayor of King’s beloved Atlanta in 1973, fired the mostly Black sanitation workforce carrying signs proclaiming, as in Memphis 1968, “I Am a Man.” And, Republicans are still the White Man’s Party, the identity they were busily crafting in 1968, through President Nixon’s “Southern Strategy.”

Why would MLK “mellow,” when the villains are arrayed in much the same way as before—the only difference being that a Black man, Barack Obama, has joined the U.S. pantheon of super-predator, million-plus killers.

Glen Ford is the executive editor of Black Agenda Report. He can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.