by John Ratliff
Last week we celebrated an historic victory in New Hampshire. For many, the fact that Sen. Sanders stood apart from the rest of the field as the most resolute and outspoken champion of Peace in the aftermath of Trump’s murder of Iranian General Suleimani encouraged a rise in support for him which has not stopped.
Thousands of volunteers from Massachusetts made the journey to the Granite State to knock on doors in the rain, the snow, and the cold to make the victory possible. Thousands more made calls or chipped in a few dollars. Thanks to the strategy, “Not Me. Us.” Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, the most progressive and pro-peace presidential candidate, is now the frontrunner in the race to unseat the most dangerous president in the history of the United States. But it will only happen if we don’t let up now…
by Marcelle Grair
If you are a worker or poor person in this country, then Bernie Sanders is your candidate. I come from a family of sharecroppers, domestic workers, retail employees, postal workers, and sanitation workers. Their work was directly connected to their quality of life. My maternal grandfather, a sanitation worker, left very early every morning and got home late. My grandfather retired at the age of 64, and one year later he died. Sanitation workers have a dangerous and stressful job. As a union organizer, I hear stories every day of workers not being valued, being overworked and underpaid. The working class and poor deserve better. We deserve Bernie Sanders.
by Brian Garvey
The right-wing coup in Bolivia that ousted indigenous President Evo Morales in November is threatening to roll back “one of the most successful social projects in modern Latin American history,” according to Stephen Kinzer, award-winning foreign correspondent and author. It is an attack on a country that is attempting to control its own resources, determine its own destiny and build a more egalitarian society. Kinzer and UMass, Boston Prof. Steve Striffler, an expert on US-Latin American solidarity, spoke to more than 50 people at a forum organized by Mass. Peace Action and other groups at the Community Church of Boston December 8th.
by Sunny Robinson
Nearly all the immigration policies the Trump administration has put in place are not only inhumane, but also violations of the United States’ own asylum laws and international protocols on asylum to which the U.S. is a signatory. What then are those policies? And what do we do about them? US policy says that any “alien” who is physically present in the US, whatever their status, may apply for asylum. The UN defines a refugee as a person who is unable or unwilling to return to his or her country due to past persecution or a well-founded fear of being persecuted in the future due to race, religion, nationality, social group or political opinion.
by Eric Speer
Thousands of papers that the Washington Post sued the government for, then released last December, show that the official narrative behind the Afghanistan War, the longest in US history, has been a constant lie. Some 2,400 American soldiers have been killed and more than 20,000 wounded in the conflict. General Douglas Lute, Afghan War czar for Presidents Bush and Obama, is quoted as saying the US “didn’t have the foggiest notion of what we were undertaking.” Yet, the Afghanistan Papers have not provoked nearly the same outrage as the 1971 Pentagon Papers that exposed US government lies about the Vietnam War. Where is the outrage?
by Andrea Burns
My mom and I have been canvassing in New Hampshire most Saturdays since November for Senator Sanders. My brother owns a home in Hartand, Vermont, a 20-minute drive from the campaign office in West Lebanon. We usually go door-to-door or drive campaign volunteers without cars to canvass. On this particular Saturday, toward the end of the canvassing, we headed to the Wal-Mart in West Lebanon. The overwhelming majority of those we met said they liked Bernie and a few had personal stories about him. A dairy farmer and his sister from Randolph told me that once, during a bad snowstorm, Sanders had shoveled the snow from her friend’s driveway.
by Jeff Klein
For more than 50 years, the UN and the international community have upheld in principle that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza had to end. After Israel’s conquests in the 1967 War, the UN Security Council declared that peace would require withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied during that conflict. Yet even as Israel built hundreds of illegal settlements in the occupied territories and annexed parts of Jerusalem and the Syrian Golan heights, the country faced nothing more than empty clucking from the international community; the US consistently blocked any action to enforce the UN and International Court of Justice decisions. Now, under the ‘Trump-Netanyahu’ administration, the US has abandoned even the pretense of abiding by international law.