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DEPARTMENTS 5 EDITOR’S NOTE by ALEXANDRA TEMPUS ‘Co-Governing’ Our Future 6 COMMENT by SI KAHN J.D. Vance Doesn’t Know Jack 8 FURTHER COMMENT by SASCHA D. MEINRATH AI and the Quest for Eternal Vigilance 11 NO COMMENT 12 LETTERS TO THE EDITOR 14 BLAST FROM THE PAST 24 ON THE LINE by KEREM GENÇER ‘Who Keeps Us Safe? Money Out of Politics? Tiffany Muller, Sam Pizzigati, and Anne Nelson reply 57 INTERVIEW WITH CHUCK COLLINS by NORMAN STOCKWELL Who’s Going to Defend Our Communities Against Billionaire Wealth Extractors? 60 BOOK EXCERPT Corridors of Contagion: How the Pandemic Exposed the Cruelties of Incarceration by Victoria Law 63 BOOK REVIEWS Shirley Chisholm in Her Own Words: Speeches and Writings reviewed by John Nichols The Myth of American Idealism: How U.S. Foreign Policy Endangers the World reviewed by Bill Lueders John Lewis: A Life reviewed by Brian Gilmore We Keep Us Safe’ 29 SMOKING GUN Immigration, By the Numbers 35 ONE QUESTION Q: How Can We Get Big VOICES 15 MIDDLE AMERICA by RUTH CONNIFF The Appeal of Tim Walz’s Joyful, Midwestern Populism 17 SMART ASS CRIPPLE by MIKE ERVIN The Worst Kind of Corporate Greed 19 WORK WON’T LOVE YOU BACK by SARAH JAFFE A New Version of the Same Old Story 22 FIRST THINGS FIRST by BILL LUEDERS When Innocence Is No Defense 49 FIRST-PERSON SINGULAR by GEORGIA STATE REPRESENTATIVE RUWA ROMMAN The Speech Not Given 66 ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA by WAJAHAT ALI Democrats Must Confront an Inconvenient Genocide 67 HEMMING AND HAWING by NEGIN FARSAD The Energy Was Here the Whole Time! 68 EDGE OF SPORTS by DAVE ZIRIN Football as a Tool for Good? 69 POEM by L.S. ASEKOFF World’s End 70 VOX POPULIST by JIM HIGHTOWER The Rightwing Attack on Social Security Is Un-American and Will Elon Betray Donald First, or Vice Versa? ON THE COVER Agata Nowicka is an illustrator, designer, and comics artist. Her works have been published in the Polish feminist magazine Wysokie Obcasy as well as The New Yorker, Time magazine, and The New York Times. She has also been featured in Illustration Now!, American Illustration, and Communication Arts Annual. 4 | OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2024 PUBLISHER Norman Stockwell GUEST EDITOR Alexandra Tempus MANAGING EDITOR David Boddiger SENIOR EDITOR Emilio Leanza ASSOCIATE EDITOR Michaela Brant WEB EDITOR Delaney Nelson EDITORS-AT-LARGE Ruth Conniff, Bill Lueders ART DIRECTOR Susan Webb DIRECTOR OF ADVANCEMENT AND ENGAGEMENT Daniel K. Libby OFFICE MANAGER Elizabeth D. Miller DIGITAL ENGAGEMENT COORDINATOR Sheriffer Chisanga POETRY EDITOR Jules Gibbs PROOFREADERS Sarah Baum, Catherine Cronin, Elizabeth D. Miller INTERNS Zane Badawi, Christopher Cruz, Julie Huynh, Jenna Marcus The full-time staff at The Progressive are members of NOLSW/UAW Local 2320. Founded in 1909 by Senator Robert M. “Fighting Bob” La Follette, The Progressive tackles the forces distorting our economy, corrupting our democracy, and imperiling our planet, and champions peace, civil liberties, equality, and justice. Editorial correspondence should be addressed to The Progressive, P.O. Box 1021, Madison, WI 53701, or editorial@progressive.org. Subscription rates U.S. - One year $29.70 International One year $45 Libraries and institutions One year (Domestic) $50; (Canadian) $65; (Foreign) $98 Send all subscription orders and correspondence to: The Progressive, P.O. Box 1021, Madison, WI 53701. For questions about subscriptions, call toll-free 1 (800) 827-0555. The Progressive is published bimonthly with combined issues in February/March, April/May, June/July, August/September, October/November, December/January. Copyright © 2024 by The Progressive Inc., 931 E. Main Street, Suite 10, Madison, WI 53703. Telephone: (608) 257-4626. Publication number (ISSN 0033-0736). Periodicals postage paid at Madison, WI, and additional mailing offices. Printed in the U.S.A. Donations: The Progressive depends on donations from readers. Contributions are tax-deductible. Mail checks to The Progressive, P.O. Box 1021, Madison, WI 53701 or visit www.progressive.org/donate. Postmaster: Send address changes to: The Progressive, P.O. Box 1021, Madison, WI 53701. www.progressive.org
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EDITOR’S NOTE ‘CO-GOVERNING’ OUR FUTURE In the days surrounding what may be the only 2024 presidential debate between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, the latter received a wave of highprofile endorsements. There was the bipartisan National Security Leaders for America, a group of senior military and government officials who denounced Trump as “a danger” to democracy and uplifted Harris as “the best—and only—presidential candidate in this race who is fit to serve as our commander-in-chief.” It echoed former Vice President Dick Cheney, who despite his own history of lying to sell the Iraq War, called Trump out for “lies and violence to keep himself in power” in his endorsement of Harris. Then another Harris backer announced himself: former White House chief counsel and U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, infamous for facilitating the “torture memos” that President George W. Bush used to justify waterboarding at Guantánamo Bay. “It’s almost all of the axis of evil,” joked Lizz Winstead, abortion access advocate and co-creator of The Daily Show, on Instagram. “Who’s left? Lynndie England? Has she come out waving her flag yet?” Winstead argues that “all these warmongers are [saying], ‘Trump . . . you’re too stupid to be as warmongery and stealth as we need you to be, so we’re gonna vote for the chick. We don’t even care what she stands for. We’re just doing this to spite you.’ ” Perhaps though, all these warmongers have simply been watching and listening to Harris herself. During the debate, she performed Cheney-level sleight of hand, paying lip service to the fact that “far too many innocent Palestinians have been killed” (more than 40,000 as of this writing—how many is appropriate?) while writing a verbal blank check for war: “I will always give Israel the ability to defend itself.” To add fuel to the fire, Harris amplified debunked claims of weaponized rape during the October 7 Hamas attacks. In her closing statements, she reiterated her intentions again, leaving zero room for doubt: “I believe in . . . ensuring we have the most lethal fighting force in the world.” Is it really any wonder that the warmongers are lining up behind her? Another presidential debate claim that sounded more dubious than it was came from Trump. “Her father’s a Marxist professor in economics,” the former President said of Harris. “And he taught her well.” Donald J. Harris is a professor emeritus of economics at Stanford University whose work The Washington Post has noted is “steeped in Marxist theory” and whose 1978 book Capital Accumulation and Income Distribution is dedicated to his daughters “Kamala and Maya.” In an essay published in 2020, the elder Harris described his daughters’ visits to Jamaica. “I would also try to explain to them the contradictions of economic and social life in a ‘poor’ country, like the striking juxtaposition of extreme poverty and extreme wealth,” he wrote. Unfortunately, such lessons didn’t translate onto the Philadelphia debate stage, where Harris promised the citizens of quasi-natural gas colony Pennsylvania—with its hundreds of thousands of orphan wells, tens of thousands of active wells, and high rates of fracking-related health impacts like asthma, low birthweight, and lymphoma—that she would not ban fracking. She then tied this conviction directly to her experience as a daughter of the middle class. With the United States on the precipice of possibly electing its first-ever woman President, and first Black and South Asian woman President, this issue of The Progressive delves into Kamala Harris’s political legacy, her ticket with vice presidential pick and current Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, and what a future with Harris as chief executive might hold. In these pages, David Masciotra details the groundbreaking, people-powered 1984 and 1988 presidential campaigns of civil rights champion Jesse Jackson—supported in its early days by a young Kamala Harris. You’ll read reports from Palestinian American writer Samer Badawi about Harris’s failure to meet the demands of the Uncommitted National Movement, and from recent Arab American Book Award winner Anna Lekas Miller on how Harris and the Democrats are reframing the issue of immigration to sound a lot more like their counterparts on the right. Education writer and Minnesotan Sarah Lahm reviews Tim Walz’s track record on public schools and asks whether and how that might translate to the national stage. Taken together, these stories could come across as discouraging. Instead, they might encourage us as progressives to devote ourselves to a politics of the people, one that addresses oppressive systems instead of valorizing candidates, one that recognizes voting as a tiny facet of the mosaic of political process. Much more of it remains local, on foot, knocking doors, forging the kinds of community connections that foster accountability and, if wielded correctly, can transform the conditions we live in. Other pieces here that illuminate this work, like James L. VanHise’s story on the grassroots rural organization Down Home North Carolina, which leverages power by monitoring the decisions of the candidates whom it helps elect, a process they call “co-governance.” Hopefully, down the road, we’ll be in a position to co-govern alongside presidential candidates, too. Until then, we might use similar tactics to pressure whoever is elected this November to work with us, and not against us. In solidarity, Alexandra Tempus Guest Editor THE PROGRESSIVE | 5

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DEPARTMENTS 5 EDITOR’S NOTE by

ALEXANDRA TEMPUS ‘Co-Governing’ Our Future 6 COMMENT by SI KAHN

J.D. Vance Doesn’t Know Jack 8 FURTHER COMMENT

by SASCHA D. MEINRATH AI and the Quest for Eternal Vigilance 11 NO COMMENT 12 LETTERS TO THE EDITOR 14 BLAST FROM THE PAST 24 ON THE LINE by KEREM GENÇER ‘Who Keeps Us Safe?

Money Out of Politics? Tiffany Muller, Sam Pizzigati, and Anne Nelson reply 57 INTERVIEW WITH CHUCK COLLINS by NORMAN STOCKWELL Who’s Going to Defend Our Communities Against Billionaire Wealth Extractors? 60 BOOK EXCERPT Corridors of Contagion: How the Pandemic Exposed the Cruelties of Incarceration by Victoria Law 63 BOOK REVIEWS Shirley Chisholm in Her Own Words: Speeches and Writings reviewed by John Nichols The Myth of American Idealism: How U.S. Foreign Policy Endangers the World reviewed by Bill Lueders John Lewis: A Life reviewed by Brian Gilmore

We Keep Us Safe’ 29 SMOKING GUN Immigration, By the Numbers 35 ONE QUESTION Q: How Can We Get Big

VOICES 15 MIDDLE AMERICA

by RUTH CONNIFF The Appeal of Tim Walz’s

Joyful, Midwestern Populism 17 SMART ASS CRIPPLE

by MIKE ERVIN The Worst Kind of Corporate Greed 19 WORK WON’T LOVE YOU BACK

by SARAH JAFFE A New Version of the Same Old Story 22 FIRST THINGS FIRST

by BILL LUEDERS When Innocence

Is No Defense 49 FIRST-PERSON SINGULAR

by GEORGIA STATE REPRESENTATIVE RUWA ROMMAN The Speech Not Given

66 ONCE UPON A TIME

IN AMERICA by WAJAHAT ALI Democrats Must Confront an Inconvenient Genocide 67 HEMMING AND HAWING

by NEGIN FARSAD The Energy Was Here the Whole Time! 68 EDGE OF SPORTS

by DAVE ZIRIN Football as a Tool for Good? 69 POEM by L.S. ASEKOFF World’s End 70 VOX POPULIST

by JIM HIGHTOWER The Rightwing Attack on

Social Security Is Un-American and Will Elon Betray Donald First, or Vice Versa?

ON THE COVER

Agata Nowicka is an illustrator, designer, and comics artist. Her works have been published in the Polish feminist magazine Wysokie Obcasy as well as The New Yorker, Time magazine, and The New York Times. She has also been featured in Illustration Now!, American Illustration, and Communication Arts Annual.

4 | OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2024

PUBLISHER Norman Stockwell GUEST EDITOR Alexandra Tempus MANAGING EDITOR David Boddiger

SENIOR EDITOR Emilio Leanza ASSOCIATE EDITOR Michaela Brant

WEB EDITOR Delaney Nelson

EDITORS-AT-LARGE Ruth Conniff, Bill Lueders ART DIRECTOR Susan Webb DIRECTOR OF ADVANCEMENT AND ENGAGEMENT Daniel K. Libby OFFICE MANAGER Elizabeth D. Miller DIGITAL ENGAGEMENT COORDINATOR

Sheriffer Chisanga POETRY EDITOR Jules Gibbs

PROOFREADERS Sarah Baum, Catherine Cronin,

Elizabeth D. Miller

INTERNS Zane Badawi, Christopher Cruz,

Julie Huynh, Jenna Marcus The full-time staff at The Progressive are members of NOLSW/UAW Local 2320.

Founded in 1909 by Senator

Robert M. “Fighting Bob” La Follette, The Progressive tackles the forces distorting our economy, corrupting our democracy, and imperiling our planet, and champions peace, civil liberties, equality, and justice.

Editorial correspondence should be addressed to The Progressive, P.O. Box 1021, Madison, WI 53701, or editorial@progressive.org.

Subscription rates U.S. - One year $29.70 International One year $45

Libraries and institutions One year (Domestic) $50; (Canadian) $65; (Foreign) $98

Send all subscription orders and correspondence to: The Progressive, P.O. Box 1021, Madison, WI 53701. For questions about subscriptions, call toll-free 1 (800) 827-0555.

The Progressive is published bimonthly with combined issues in February/March, April/May, June/July, August/September, October/November, December/January. Copyright © 2024 by The Progressive Inc., 931 E. Main Street, Suite 10, Madison, WI 53703. Telephone: (608) 257-4626. Publication number (ISSN 0033-0736). Periodicals postage paid at Madison, WI, and additional mailing offices. Printed in the U.S.A. Donations: The Progressive depends on donations from readers. Contributions are tax-deductible. Mail checks to The Progressive, P.O. Box 1021, Madison, WI 53701 or visit www.progressive.org/donate. Postmaster: Send address changes to: The Progressive, P.O. Box 1021, Madison, WI 53701.

www.progressive.org

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