It’s not in the official history books of the US Civil Rights Movement nor certainly is it reported in media, but the Democratic Party (DP) pulled the same maneuver with that movement as it did with the women’s movement: it’s operatives worked tirelessly, often ruthlessly, to railroad independent political action into the death grip of the DP & turn it into an electoral apparatus rather than an activist movement. The DP succeeded–& the civil rights movement ended long before it had achieved solid ground in ending racist oppression.

Uncompromising Black activists allied in the Black Power movement were hounded by FBI & police. Many ended up in jail on frame-up charges; some were outright murdered; some fled to other countries.

One of those who moved seamlessly from leadership of the Civil Rights Movement to the DP was John Lewis, a Democratic US Representative from Georgia since 1986. Lewis became chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in 1963; was a Freedom Rider; spoke at the 1963 March on Washington where Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his “I Have a Dream” speech; led the demonstration known as “Bloody Sunday.”

Lewis has a chest full of medals from his service to the DP, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Obama He belongs to the Congressional Black Caucus, & sits on important Congressional caucuses–like the one on road safety & another on COPD, the lung disease. Talk about taming a tiger!

His service to the republic is primarily keeping Black voters within the political stranglehold of the DP: making sure they register to vote but making damn sure they don’t protest. Though he played a leading role in the Civil Rights Movement, his response to Black Lives Matter has been primarily to chide them to ‘understand the way of peace & nonviolence’.

There’s no record of opposition by Lewis when the Clinton presidency continued the so-called “war on drugs,” which was always a war on the Black community, especially the youth–to prevent any re-emergence of civil rights activity. Martial law was employed in the Black community & thousands of young Black teens were executed or ended up with life sentences for smoking marijuana. But not a peep out of our man Lewis. Was he too busy monitoring road safety & making the lecture circuit on COPD?

Now Lewis has entered the presidential campaign to endorse Clinton. He’s sure to be rewarded lavishly for that & might even end up on the board of the Clinton Foundation. But to reap that munificence, he had to lie through his teeth–which is probably old hat for him now. He actually stood before media & said he’d never seen Bernie Sanders in the Civil Rights Movement but he had seen both Clintons. Talk about degrading yourself for a little largesse! But of course, once you sell your soul, it isn’t worth much any more.

Far be it from principled political people to endorse Sanders as president because he marched for civil rights in the 1960s. But Lewis is making an ass of himself by claiming that he, as a central figure in the movement, remembers who he did & did not see in crowds of thousands of civil rights protesters. The Clintons were unknown entities–especially in progressive circles & the social movements. They were elitists who functioned politically as elitists & shunned political protest.

In the 1960s, Hillary was still in her Barry Goldwater period. Goldwater was a US senator who called Martin Luther King, Jr. a “demagogue,” opposed the Freedom Rides & sit-ins, & voted against the 1964 Civil Rights Act, calling it a dire threat to Blacks that would create a police state. Goldwater was called “a hopeless captive of the lunatic calculating right-wing extremists” by baseball legend & civil rights activist Jackie Robinson. MLK, Jr. said if Goldwater was elected, the nation would erupt into “violence & riots, the like of which we have never seen before.” So at what point does Lewis claim he saw her marching for civil rights? Did he recognize her after she became first lady?

Photo is John Lewis with members of the Congressional Black Caucus at press conference endorsing Clinton.

{PS: Lewis never saw me either, but I was there.}

Caveat of the day: never trust a politician, especially one who runs a country belonging to NATO. That’s like trusting horse manure not to smell.

Justin Trudeau, who takes smarmy to new depths, made a big photo op spectacle of greeting Syrian refugees at the airport. Now he’s deployed a Canadian warship in the NATO fleet headed to the Aegean Sea to stand off plastic dinghies carrying refugees, including children, elderly, infirm, & disabled.

The new Trudeau just like the old Harper–only sleazier.

There is an alarming development that makes you question if neoliberalism hasn’t entered the Twilight Zone. NATO, one of the chief military forces involved in creating the refugee crisis from Syria & the Middle East, has ordered warships into the Aegean Sea to patrol the Turkish coast & stop the flow of refugees. They of course present it as thwarting criminal networks that smuggle refugees. Anyone willing to swallow that story might be too stupid to live, as the ineloquent so bluntly put it.

An 83-year-old ex-priest named John Feit was arrested Tuesday in Arizona for the 1960 murder of a 25-year-old woman named Irene Garza. Ms Garza was a teacher. She went to confession with then Fr. Feit at Sacred Heart Catholic Church in McAllen & was pulled five days later from an irrigation canal. Asphyxiation was the cause of death.

There’s no point in speculating on the 56 year default of prosecutors who apparently had evidence for indicting Feit. We don’t know enough about the details of the case. But we do know in 1960 it was considered unthinkable a priest would be so monstrous. Revelations about the issue of priest sexual assaults did not start coming out until the 1980s & later when the victims began to speak out. It should be said that the women’s movement had significant impact on dragging the crime of child sexual assault out of the darkness.

“Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down.”

That’s a line from US poet Robert Frost’s “Mending Wall,” a poetic lament of estrangement between neighbors. But it could just as well be the anthem of modern times when separation barriers between countries & territories are being erected at a record pace. There are now hundreds of the damn things. Many are to deter undocumented immigrants & refugees–like the wall on the US-Mexican border. The several Israeli walls are to enforce apartheid. All the walls are militarized & to enforce exclusion.

The remarkable Israeli journalist, Gideon Levy, wrote an article in Haaretz last November after Hillary Clinton published her groveling, money-grubbing love letter to Israel. The article titled “Hillary Clinton is No Friend of Israel” is an iteration of the long-held anti-Zionist view that a Jewish-only state in Palestine is a death trap for Jews, not a sanctuary from persecution & pogroms.

In the article, Levy asks: “What happened to the Hillary Rodham Clinton who in her youth fought for civil rights & against the Vietnam War, & as a lawyer specialized in children’s rights? Did she not hear what her dream state is doing to Palestinian children? What happened to the glorious career woman who was considered liberal & justice-seeking on her way up? Did she forget it all? Does money buy everything? Or, when it comes to Israel, do all principles suddenly change?”

No one will fault Levy for getting Clinton’s political biography all wrong. But until it became advantageous to misrepresent her youthful politics, it was evident that Clinton was always a conservative ideologue. There is not a shred of evidence she ever participated in the civil rights or anti-Vietnam War movement & considerable evidence to the contrary. Nor was she ever a part of the feminist movement except as an elite participant involved in demobilizing it as a social movement & making it an expedience to be manipulated & coopted to serve US foreign policy.

Levy’s article really raises the broader question of why all US politicians have to vow obeisance to Israel, a foreign country–& not just US politicians, but from around the world. What mesmeric makes a small colonial settler state so vital? We can dispense with any illusions that governments give a rat’s ass about freedom of Jews from persecution. Racisms & colonialisms of every kind are essential to the very matrix of the modern capitalist system. It couldn’t function without marginalizing & demonizing millions of people–& ethnicity, gender, & skin hue are the easiest ways to do that.

One reason, of course, is that Israel is a linchpin to control over the Middle East, serving as a military fortress to hold back the spread of democracy. That was played out mightily in the Egyptian uprising of 2011 where the Egyptian people wanted to advance solidarity with Palestinians but were violently thwarted by the machinations of the military junta backed by US militarism–brokered by then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Israel also serves to legitimize colonialism which is coming back with a vengeance under neoliberalism, the barbaric phase of capitalism. Israel, which calls itself “the only democracy in the Middle East,” might give a kinder, gentler face to colonialism & apartheid if it weren’t so barbaric with bombing Gaza & expropriating Palestinian lands in the West Bank to hand over to Jewish settlers from all over Kingdom Come.

When Levy says Clinton is not a friend to Israelis because of its monstrous crimes against Palestinians, it is because she legitimizes & facilitates the development of political psychosis & undermines the development of human solidarity that would make a democratic secular state possible where Jews & Palestinians can live as brothers & sisters.

Honoring & building the economic, cultural, & academic boycott of Israel can help build the bonds of solidarity necessary for peace & democracy. Buy nothing with a barcode beginning 729.

This photo is the obligatory photo op of Clinton with Israeli terrorist & former president Shimon Peres taken last year after her groveling professions of love.

(Photo from Xinhua/Reuters)

There is plenty of justified anger at Gloria Steinem for impugning the political integrity of young women. But included in many of those criticisms are historically ignorant, misogynist, & politically motivated attacks on what is called “second wave feminism.”

That would be because the writers didn’t do their homework & just spouted off the top of their heads–or have an axe to grind against feminism. If anyone actually studied the politics of Gloria Steinem, her comments would come as no surprise but be understood as the pattern of her convictions. She has always been completely establishment in her politics. People often bring up her CIA employment to discredit her but little can be known about that since she is secretive & litigious about it. What can be known is her involvement in undermining the independence of the women’s movement by railroading it into the Democratic Party–which is exactly what happened & what she is most politically culpable for.

The defense of lesser evil politics is just heating up. It can become quite testy because it doesn’t just signify a different way of getting to the same goal; it represents entirely different approaches to politics & social transformation. It’s the reality of Robert Frost’s poetics that “Two roads diverged in a wood…& that has made all the difference.”

The primary difference is whether one looks to compromised, often corrupt politicians to create social change or whether one looks to organizing working people to achieve their own liberation from inequality. It’s where you place your trust & commitment in practice.

Finally a candidate has entered the presidential campaign who brings dignity to what has become a comic travesty & mockery of democracy. According to CBS News, Vermin Supreme placed fourth as a Democrat in the New Hampshire primary last night, with 200 votes.

Some claim our man Vermin is a political satirist & not a serious candidate but who would dare say that with a straight face after viewing the Republican line-up? Or after listening to one of Trump’s speeches? Or after watching Clinton & Sanders play the populist card? Incidentally, someone ought to analyze Trump’s use of hand gestures. There’s some derangement going on there.