The story of the Israeli war on Gaza can be epitomized in the story of the Israeli war on Beit Lahia, a small Palestinian town in the northern part of the Strip.

When Israel launched its ground operations in Gaza, Beit Lahia was already largely destroyed due to many days of relentless Israeli bombardment which killed thousands.

Still, the border Gaza town resisted, leading to a hermetic Israeli siege, which was never lifted, even when the Israeli military redeployed out of much of northern Gaza in January 2024.

Beit Lahia is largely an isolated town, a short distance away from the fence separating besieged Gaza from Israel. It is surrounded mostly by agricultural areas that make it nearly impossible to defend.

Yet, a year of grisly Israeli war and genocide in Gaza did not end the fighting there. To the contrary, 2024 has ended where it started, with intense fighting on all fronts in Gaza, with Beit Lahia, a town that was supposedly 'conquered' earlier, still leading the fight.

Beit Lahia is a microcosm of Israel's failed war in the Strip, a bloody grind that has led nowhere, despite the massive destruction, the repeated ethnic cleansing of the population, the starvation and the genocide. Every day of Israel's terrible war on the Palestinians serves as a reminder that there are no military solutions and that the Palestinian will cannot be broken, no matter the cost or the sacrifice.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, however, remains unconvinced. He entered the new year with more promises of 'total victory', and ended it as a wanted criminal by the International Criminal Court (ICC).

The issuing of an arrest warrant for the Israeli leader was a reiteration of a similar position taken by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) at the start of 2024.

The ICJ's position, however, was hardly as strong as many had hoped or wanted to believe. The world's highest court had, on January 26, ordered Israel “to take action to prevent acts of genocide”, but stopped short of ordering Israel to halt its war.

The Israeli objectives of the war remained unclear, although Israeli politicians provided clues as to what the war on Gaza was really all about. Last January, several Israeli ministers, including 12 from Netanyahu’s Likud party, took part in a conference calling for the resettlement of Gaza and the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. “Without settlements, there is no security,” extremist Israeli minister of finance, Bezalel Smotrich, said.

For that to happen, the Palestinian people themselves, not merely those fighting on the ground, had to be tamed, broken and defeated. Thus, the 'flour massacres', a new Israeli war tactic that was centered around killing as many Palestinians as possible while waiting for the few aid trucks that were allowed to reach northern Gaza.

On February 29, more than 100 Gazans were killed while queueing for aid. They were mowed down by Israeli soldiers, as they desperately tried to lay their hands on a loaf of bread, baby milk or a bottle of water. This scene was repeated, again and again in the north, but also in other parts of the Gaza Strip throughout the year.

The aim was to starve the Palestinians in the north so that they would be forced to flee to other parts of the Strip. Famine actualized as early as January, and many of those who tried to flee south were killed, anyway.

From the early days of the war, Israel understood that to ethnically cleanse Palestinians, they must target all aspects of life in the Strip. This includes hospitals, bakeries, markets, electric grids, water stations, and the like.

The Gaza hospitals, of course, received a large share of Israeli attacks. In March, once more, Israel attacked the Al-Shifa Medical Complex in Gaza City with greater ferocity than before. When it finally withdrew, on April 1, the Israeli army destroyed the entire compound, leaving behind mass graves with hundreds of bodies, mostly medical staff, women and children. They even executed several patients.

Aside from a few statements of concern by western leaders, little was done to bring the genocide to an end. Only when seven international aid workers with the charity, the World Central Kitchen, were killed by Israel, a global outcry followed, leading to the first and only Israeli apology in the entire war.

Desperate to distract from its failure in Gaza, but also Lebanon, and keen on presenting the Israeli public with any kind of victory, the Israeli military began escalating its war beyond Gaza. This included the strike on the Iranian Embassy in Syria on April 1. Despite repeated attempts, which included the assassination in Iran of the head of Hamas's Political Bureau, Ismail Haniyeh, on July 31, an all-out regional war has not yet come to pass.

Another escalation was taking place, this time not by Netanyahu but by millions of people around the world, demanding an end to the Israeli war. A focal point of the protests were student movements that spread across US campuses and, ultimately, worldwide. Instead of allowing free speech to flourish, however, America's largest academic institutions resorted to the police, who violently shut down many of the protests, arresting hundreds of students, many of whom were not allowed to return to their colleges.

Meanwhile, the US continued to block international efforts aimed at producing a ceasefire resolution at the United Nations Security Council. Ultimately, on May 31, US President Joe Biden delivered a speech conveying what he termed an “Israeli proposal” to end the war. After some delay, Hamas accepted the proposal, but Israel rejected it. In his rejection, Netanyahu referred to Biden's speech as “incorrect” and “incomplete”. Strangely, but also unsurprisingly, the White House blamed the Palestinians for the failed initiative.

Losing faith in the American leadership, some European countries began changing their foreign policy doctrines on Palestine, with Ireland, Norway and Spain recognizing the State of Palestine on May 28. The decisions were largely symbolic but indicated that western unity around Israel was faltering.

Israel remained unfazed and, despite international warnings, invaded the Rafah area in southern Gaza on May 7, seizing control of the Philadelphi Corridor - a buffer zone between Gaza and the Egyptian border that extends for 14 kilometers.

Netanyahu's government insisted that only war can bring their captives back. There was very little success in that strategy, however. On June 8, Israel, with logistical support from the US and other western countries managed to rescue four of its captives held in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza. To do so, Israel killed at least 276 Palestinians and wounded 800 more.

In August, another heart-wrenching massacre took place, this time in the Al-Tabaeen school in Gaza City, where 93 people, mostly women and children, were murdered in a single Israeli strike. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, women and children were the main victims of the Israeli genocide, accounting for 70 percent by November 8.

An earlier report by the Lancet Medical Journal said that if the war stopped in July, “186,000 or even more” Palestinians would have been killed. The war, however, went on. The rate of genocide in Gaza seemed to maintain the same killing ratio, despite the major regional developments including the mutual Iranian-Israeli tit-for-tat strikes and the major Israeli ground operation in Lebanon.

In October, Israel returned to the policies of targeting or besieging hospitals, killing doctors and other medical staff, and targeting aid and civil defense workers. Still, Israel would not achieve any of its strategic goals of the war. Even the killing of Hamas’ leader, Yahya Sinwar, in battle on October 16 would not, in any way, alter the course of the war.

Israel's frustration grew by leaps and bounds throughout the year. Its desperate attempt to control the global narrative on the Gaza genocide largely failed. On July 19, and after listening to the testimonies of over 50 countries, the ICJ issued a landmark ruling that “Israel's continued presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory is illegal.”

That ruling, which expressed international consensus on the matter, was translated on September 17 to a UN General Assembly resolution “demanding an end to Israel’s occupation of Palestine within the next twelve months”.

All of this effectively meant that Israel's attempt at normalizing its occupation of Palestine, and its quest to illegally annex the West Bank was considered null and void by the international community. Israel, however, doubled down, taking its rage against West Bank Palestinians, who, too, were experiencing one of the worst Israeli pogroms in many years.

According to the Palestinian Health Ministry, by November 21, at least 777 Palestinians have been killed since October 7, 2023, while thousands more were wounded and over 11,700 arrested.

To make matters worse, Smotrich called, on November 11, for the full annexation of the West Bank. The call was made soon after the election of Donald Trump as the next US President, an event that initially inspired optimism amongst Israeli leaders, but later concerns that Trump may not serve the role of the savior for Israel after all.

On November 21, the ICC issued its historic ruling to arrest Netanyahu and his Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. The decision represented a measure of hope, however faint, that the world is finally ready to hold Israel accountable for its many crimes.

2025 could, indeed, represent that watershed moment. This remains to be seen. However, as far as Palestinians are concerned, even with the failure of the international community to stop the genocide and reign in Israel, their steadfastness, sumoud, will remain strong until freedom is finally attained.

A mob overruns the U.S. Capitol, prompted by the country’s outgoing and now re-elected president. A lone gunman vents his wrath by assassinating health-insurance CEO Brian Thompson and is cheered on social media. These are two among many examples of the eruption of political violence.

U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren allowed that the shooting of Thompson was a “visceral response” to “vile practices” in the country’s health-care system, a response that should be taken as a “warning” not to push people too far. “Violence is never the answer,” she added, “never a justification for murder.” The immorality of murder had to be stated. It could not be taken for granted.

Rage is unleashed among us. Unrestrained anger and furious violence mark our troubled times and signal the broken state of the body politic. This is not history’s first outburst of political rage; thus, it is important for us to recognize the present frenzy for what it is.

What is this scourge?

Rage is raw emotion—a toxic mixture of frustration, fear, anger, and hatred that can trigger uninhibited violence. Fury suppresses reason while focusing narrowly on targets of hatred. More than just an individual aberration, it is a cultural phenomenon, a socio-political breach of existent norms and constraints, the vehicle of demagoguery, the engine of war propaganda, the recourse of political movements that have renounced nonviolence. Once unleashed, fury seeks vengeance by mayhem and annihilation.

Are we about to succumb collectively to a culture of hatred as we incline toward authoritarianism? Can we find a way out of these dark times, out of this neurotic attachment to the hate-driven construction of a scapegoat enemy?

Samuel Wells, in his 2023 essay entitled “The Emotion Standing in the Way of Peace,” depicts vividly the deadly dynamic of rage. In the exhilarating moment of an “intoxication of indignant furor,” when “a red mist descends,” we lose “all rational faculties.” All sense of restraint is abandoned in “our rampaging quest for destruction and vengeance.” We tell ourselves that destroying everything in our path will restore justice. Nuance is absent from this justificative story; the raw narrative reduces to a “bellicose roar”—a scream to resolve every wrong by obliterating an enemy.

Rage carries a mythic charge of avenging injustice. Erinyes were the avenging goddesses in ancient Greece, the personification of righteous justice, known variously as the Furies. Their enduring spirit is a formative expression of rage. “Among all the gods, monsters, and spirits,” Mike Greenburg observes, these goddesses of the dark realm “with their particularly harsh view of justice” were “among the most terrifying.” Their calling was to hunt, punish, and torment wrongdoers until they died in agony and then to continue tormenting them in the afterlife. Orestes, pursued for the crime of matricide, could be saved from the Furies and exonerated only by the intervention of Athena who ordered his trial by a panel of twelve Athenian citizens. The Furies were tempered by a nascent democratic act.

Yet, democracy itself is victim to rage when anger, stoked by political elites, becomes an omnipresent force of politics. Political tolerance, on which democratic society is premised, succumbs to a profound antagonism between “us” and “them.” Rage undercuts the citizenry’s commitment to democratic norms and values (See Steven W. Webster, American Rage: How Anger Shapes Our Politics. Cambridge University Press, 2020; and also Michael A. Milburn and Sheree D. Conrad, Raised to Rage: The Politics of Anger and the Roots of Authoritarianism. MIT Press, 2016).

The mythic force of righteous rage corrupts the pursuit of justice by resorting to means that pervert professed ends. The rhetoric of vengeance whips up an authoritarian insolence. Democratic values are debased, and democratic practices are diminished. Deliberation is silenced. Justice is defiled. The common good is sacrificed. Democratic polity is lost. Violence prevails, except by divine intervention, deus ex machina.

What explains this dysfunction?

The present demagogic moment reflects and exacerbates deep tensions created by economic displacement, demographic shift, and mass migration in a context of divisive new media that breed disinformation and construct opinion silos. The country’s loss of its imperial grip on world order is mirrored domestically in the destabilization of its timeworn racial hierarchy. Faith in the system is stretched to the breaking point. Tearing down a failing establishment feels right to the disaffected public that this November returned an authoritarian demagogue to the White House. Rage is the noxious product of systemic insecurity.

Wrath now dominates American politics. That has not always been the case, nor did it come about suddenly in the present instance. The country gradually changed over decades, argues anthropologist Peter Wood (Wrath: America Enraged, Encounter Books, 2021), from a nation that preferred self-control to one that relies on anger to wield political power. But to assume a national preference for self-control, Wood must overlook a history of national rage that includes, for example, the anticommunist McCarthyism of the late 1940s and the 1950s, the preceding Red Scare of 1917-1920, and multiple outbreaks of Ku Klux Klan domestic terrorism in the 1860s, 1920s-30s, and 1950s-1960s against Black Americans and other minorities. Unfortunately, Wood’s desire to celebrate American Greatness requires him to overlook these malign features of U.S. history.

Wood tells his story of civility’s current decline from the perspective of a scholar who sees the threat of righteous anger as emanating from the political left rather than the right. These are the barbarians, he believes, who use anger to acquire power and pervert American culture. Wood sees himself as a higher-education watchdog because the university is the point of origin, he maintains, for nearly all the bad ideas (such as critical race theory, White racism, climate alarmism, and gun control) that blight contemporary American culture. Wrath is a dangerous weapon of resistance, but in Wood’s view it is justified to save the country and its civilization from the ostentatious anger of progressive ideologues. They are the malignant force that provokes the justified wrath of ordinary Americans who have been denied “a legitimate voice in their own government” (p. vii). Echoing the interwar “conservative revolutionaries” who paved the way for fascism in 1930’s Europe, Wood stands for the defeat, and indeed the eradication, of progressivism in all its forms.

Here, boldly set out, is wrath’s circular raison d'être of rage on rage. Fury is acceptable in the service of the right cause, Wood insists, in response to the adversary’s perceived hostility. Those on the left, whom he accuses of taking sadistic delight in thwarting the popular will and harming the republic, deserve the wrath of the Furies. Yet, this harsh measure of justice is based on the troublesome premise of an absolute distinction between good and evil, a judgment at odds with the ethos of contingency, fallibility, deliberation, and the tolerance of a broader, more nuanced perspective that is at the heart of any meaningful democracy.

Taking the measure of social rage, sociologist Bonnie Berry observes that besides violence, per se, it encompasses “selfishness, rudeness, short-sidedness, aggression, intolerance, and narrow-mindedness.” The expression of rage, “replete with absolutisms and over-simplification,” is fraught with distortions and distractions irrelevant to addressing serious social problems. Demagoguery prompts a disenchanted public to target scapegoats based on their nationality, race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, religion, and other markers of difference. The distraction of these socially created enemies leaves the ultrapowerful in charge and unaccountable. All of this makes social rage appear bigger than it is, Berry argues. Its “vociferousness, exaggeration, loudness, and vivid imagery” is a matter of “impression management” that makes it seem “pervasive and powerful”—and thus beyond resistance (Social Rage: Emotion and Cultural Conflict, Taylor and Francis, 1999, pp. x, 13-14).

Yet, questions remain: Are we about to succumb collectively to a culture of hatred as we incline toward authoritarianism? Can we find a way out of these dark times, out of this neurotic attachment to the hate-driven construction of a scapegoat enemy?

The country’s thin veneer of democracy has not held up well to the surge of tyranny’s rage, a rage that has intensified.

Such questions are better raised than answered by Willard Gaylin with his focus on individual psychosis and paranoia, but he does point to social conditions, economic factors, and religious and political institutions that cultivate and exploit rage more broadly. The great danger, Gaylin concludes, lies with those who “cynically manipulate and exploit” the misery of people suffering “a sense of deprivation,” agitators who “organize and encourage hatred for their political ends” (Hatred: The Psychological Dissent into Violence, Public Affairs, 2003, pp. 215-15, 239-40, 246-7).

Rage over a deep sense of loss can be turned inward when a people no longer recognize one another as such, when they cannot empathize across differences and divisions, do not identify with the Other, and choose to render diversities in dehumanizing and demonizing terms to the point of losing sight of a shared humanity.

Domestic rage is akin to rage in international relations when the image of the enemy within reflects the projected image of the foreign enemy as the savage, the barbarian, the cause of trouble. The ancient Greeks protected their own polities from civil war by dedicating temples and altars to the Furies, which meant rage in hard times was redirected toward foreign enemies. Outsiders took on the bestial form that placed them beyond empathy. Yet, what may have preserved civility and contained rage in the ancient city-state does not hold in a disparate republic of over 300 million, where insiders are more easily marked as outsiders. As Rupert Brodersen suggests, resentment of the estranged Other produces rage without moral restraint or regard—indeed, a sense of moral imperative in an aggressor’s pursuit of justice, which can “plunge entire communities into chaos” when the target of rage is viewed as “undeserving of moral consideration” (Emotional Motives in International Relations: Rage, Rancour and Revenge, Routledge, 2018, pp. 4-7, 37-40). A baseless internet rumor that Haitian immigrants “are eating the dogs … eating the cats … eating the pets” of Springfield, Ohio residents, repeated by Donald Trump in a presidential debate witnessed by 67 million viewers, was an unprompted lie, observed Politifact, that reinforced negative stereotypes and incited dozens of bomb threats, “stigmatizing the town and its residents in the name of campaign rage.”

Where does that leave us?

On the one hand, the present rage promotes authoritarian oligarchy over democracy. On the other, it signals democracy’s failure. We are more accustomed to fighting wars in the name of defending democracy than to enriching democratic culture. Rage is attuned to the culture of war, a culture that permeates and informs daily life in the U.S. and diminishes civic life. Trump’s first administration was a dire warning and a clear and present danger—a bleak reminder of what we have been before and should not become again—but a danger that mattered too little to too many people this past November. If there is a lesson to draw from the outcome of the 2024 general election, short of giving up on politics, it is the need to cultivate a thicker, stronger democratic character. The country’s thin veneer of democracy has not held up well to the surge of tyranny’s rage, a rage that has intensified. Whether we can deepen the sources of authentic democratic citizenship in the face of four more years of a Trump presidency remains an open question.

The Wall Street Journal has confirmed in a blockbuster investigation that President Biden has been mentally diminished throughout his first term in office. Democrats knew and covered it up.

The post It’s Officially Confirmed: Biden Was Always Senile first appeared on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

The post It’s Officially Confirmed: Biden Was Always Senile appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

Union workers broke open the cookie jar in 2024, after years of stagnant wages and rising prices. With strikes and the threat of strikes, workers did more than forestall concessions: They gained ground. Union workers in the private sector saw 6% real wage rises for the year.

Just the fear that workers would organize drove up wages at non-union employers like Delta Airlines, Amazon, and Mercedes.

Meanwhile, unemployment rates of around 4% made strikes easier to maintain. For instance, many Boeing workers were able to get side jobs during their 53-day strike this fall. Relatively plentiful jobs have also made it easier for workers to organize new unions, since the threat of getting fired is less daunting.

Workers’ demands for union democracy have fueled more fights, more wins, higher expectations, and more new organizing. It’s obvious that workers want and need unions that can match and defeat the billionaires.

Nearly 28,000 school employees in Virginia and 10,000 nurses in Michigan joined unions in the two biggest organizing victories of the year. At the first Southern auto plant to organize in decades, Volkswagen in Chattanooga, Tennessee, 5,000 workers won a union in April by a decisive 73%.

But even with a union, working conditions are often abominable. Speed-up and long hours make work risky and wear us out.

And storm clouds are on the horizon. Even our current weak labor laws and safety enforcement are on U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s chopping block. Expect attacks on immigrant workers, public employee unions, safety regulations, climate protection, and the very idea of labor law.

Wage Gains—Finally

After a strike that shut down production in the Pacific Northwest, Boeing Machinists bagged a 38% general wage increase over four years. A three-day port strike netted 20,000 Longshore (ILA) workers 61% over six years. It was the first East Coast-wide longshore strike since 1977.

Continuing the uptick in strikes since the onset of Covid-19, 2024 is on track for as many strikes as 2022, though it didn’t match the huge walkouts of 2023 in Hollywood, at Kaiser, and at the Big 3. Johnnie Kallas of the Cornell Labor Action Tracker reported 34 strikes in manufacturing through November.

Workers gained just by threatening a strike. At Daimler Truck in North Carolina, 7,400 workers chanted “Tick tock” as the contract deadline approached. They defeated tiers and won a 25% increase, with more for lower-paid workers.

After a vigorous contract campaign and 99.5% strike vote, American Airlines flight attendants (APFA) secured an immediate 20% pay increase, back pay from their 2019 contract expiration, and boarding pay for the first time. (Most flight attendants aren’t paid till the aircraft door closes.) Southwest flight attendants (TWU) won big wage gains; United flight attendants (AFA) voted 99.9% to strike, and may still do so. Airline workers have to navigate a lengthy obstacle course sanctioned by the Railway Labor Act, if they want to strike.

Teacher strikes yielded gains for teachers and students. In Massachusetts, where reformers lead the statewide union, but strikes are illegal, teachers in several districts struck anyway. They won more student services, time to plan classes, and raises for the lowest-paid aides—60% in 10 schools in Andover in January.

Gains from 2023’s strikes raised expectations for 2024. Unions that pushed sub-par contracts on their members faced revolts. Machinists leaders at Boeing backpedaled furiously when a contract they recommended was voted down by 95% in September. Letter Carriers are organizing a vigorous “vote no” campaign after union leaders submitted a contract with 1.3% annual wage increases.

Employers often coughed up pay but fought union demands on overtime, staffing, automation, and the moving of work. Longshore workers, for example, suspended their strike with a big pay promise, but job-killing automation issues remained unresolved, with negotiations ongoing.

The strike threat at Daimler Truck, and the strike at Boeing, did extract contractual promises on where work would be done. But enforcement may require additional job action. Stellantis has so far broken its promise to the Auto Workers to reopen its Belvidere, Illinois, assembly plant—a condition of ending the UAW’s 2023 Stand-Up Strike. Auto workers are debating how to enforce that demand, and many Stellantis locals have taken strike votes.

In the Daimler contract, workers won a renewed promise of a guaranteed daily truck output, to dispel fears that the work would be moved to Mexico—a threat the company deployed regularly in negotiations.

At Boeing, the new contract promises to locate production of the next passenger jet in the Puget Sound area. But the work will likely start after the contract expires, and union leaders expect it may require another strike to enforce the agreement.

Despite big strike leverage, Boeing workers didn’t get a ban on mandatory overtime, though they can no longer be forced to work two weekends in a row. “I don’t think that people should be required to work more than 40 hours a week to keep their jobs,” said Boeing Machinist Mylo Lang.

Continuing 2023’s trend of defeating solidarity-crushing tiers at UPS and the Big 3 automakers, tiers were eliminated at Allison Transmission and Daimler Truck, while solar Ironworkers in California were able to end tiers in a multi-year effort to make commercial solar installation a union job.

Reformers Spur Organizing

Reform movements and new leadership in the Auto Workers and Teamsters led to big investments in new organizing. In February, the UAW announced it would spend $40 million to organize non-union auto and battery plants through 2026.

In October, the Teamsters announced they had added 50,000 members in the two years since new leaders took office. The Teamsters have made organizing Amazon a priority, and the Staten Island Amazon Labor Union voted to affiliate in June, as ALU-IBT Local 1. The New York Times reported that the Teamsters have committed $8 million toward organizing Amazon as well as access to their $300 million strike fund.

Amazon warehouse workers in California and New York have been marching on their bosses, demanding recognition. Newly organized Teamster drivers at Amazon have been setting up roving picket lines to disrupt operations until the company recognizes the union.

In these two unions, effective strike threats and dedication to organizing are no accident. They started with reform movements: Unite All Workers for Democracy in the Auto Workers and Teamsters for a Democratic Union in the Teamsters. More victories are coming down the pike: Rail Machinists (IAM District 19) elected reform leadership in 2024, as did New York City teacher retirees (UFT), a 70,000-person chapter. Up next are reformers in the Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW), Theatrical and Stage Employees (IATSE), Professional and Technical Engineers (IFPTE), and maybe soon the Letter Carriers (NALC), thanks to an insulting contract offer pushed by the leadership.

The troublemaking wing of the movement continues to grow, as evidenced by the 4,700 workers who showed up at the April Labor Notes Conference, and the thousands more who wanted to attend. (There just wasn’t space!)

Most Elections in a Decade

Unions continue to be more popular than at any time since the 1960s, with 70% public approval. Private sector union elections this year involved 107,000 workers, the highest in a decade, up from 63,000 in 2022 and 93,000 in 2023.

More than 20,000 new graduate student workers won unions since last December.

After changing state law to allow bargaining, 27,000 Virginia school employees won wall-to-wall representation in Fairfax County, creating one of the largest K-12 unions on the East Coast.

In November, 10,000 nurses at the Corewell hospital chain in southern Michigan won the biggest unionization election in recent memory, organizing with the Teamsters.

However, the pace of organizing “is not enough to keep up with employment growth, let alone meaningfully increase [private sector] union density,” wrote union researcher Chris Bohner.

Starbucks is a case in point. In February, Starbucks Workers United forced management to negotiate after two years of organizing. Ten months later, they’re still in contract talks, and 130 more stores have voted union. That adds up to 522 union stores, with 11,000 workers. But Starbucks operates 10,000 stores in the U.S.

Plant-Building Boom

The Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act stimulated a building boom for electric vehicle and battery plants—many in the South—opening the possibility of organizing drives at dozens of facilities as they ramp up production. The UAW extracted a promise during its 2023 Stand-Up Strike to include in the master contract 6,000 new General Motors jobs at four planned battery plants.

Workers at the first of these, Ultium Cells in Lordstown, Ohio, signed a contract in June. The union announced a majority at BlueOval SK Battery Park in Kentucky in November.

New Flyer electric bus manufacturing workers in Anniston, Alabama won their first contract in May, scoring raises up to 38%, through the Electrical Workers (IUE), a division of the Communications Workers.

After the big win at Volkswagen, the UAW hit a speed bump in its drive to organize German, Korean, and Japanese-owned plants when workers at Mercedes in Alabama voted down the union 2,642 to 2,045. Companies have been pulling out all the stops on the propaganda Wurlitzer, enlisting hostile politicians (and even preachers!) to stop workers from uniting.

Cease-Fire Switch

Unions opposed a Democratic presidential administration on a military issue for the first time in memory. Advocating “cease-fire in Gaza” had been something staffers faced discipline for. But it came to be viewed as common sense by most of the labor movement.

Support for a cease-fire started with unions like the United Electrical Workers (UE), whose members had long studied and debated the situation. It spread as dissenters—from teachers to painters—began speaking up, insisting that it was the place of unions to oppose mass death supported by our government. “The main question that came up was, ‘What does this have to do with us?’” said Texas IBEW member Dave Pinkham. “We made an appeal to humanity: ‘U.S. military support to Israel is supporting violence there. Let’s stop.’”

In October 2023, Postal Workers (APWU) President Mark Dimondstein was alone in calling for a cease-fire at the AFL-CIO executive council, and was denounced by others. By February, the AFL-CIO was calling for a cease-fire. By July, seven unions representing nearly half the union members in the U.S. were calling for a stop to military aid to Israel.

At some colleges, workers struck to defend members who had faced discipline and even attacks by campus police for protesting U.S. support for Israel.

Israel is still raining U.S.-made bombs and missiles on Gaza and Lebanon, showing the limits of union resolutions. But a Cold War-era taboo has broken. Perhaps unions can go one step further and figure out how to block the manufacture and transport of weapons destined for wars of aggression and genocide.

Storm Clouds

Federal workers and immigrants are likely to be the first targets of the incoming Trump administration and Republican-dominated Congress. Trump and his lackeys plan to slash federal spending, install a corporate-friendly National Labor Relations Board, stop subsidies for the electric vehicle transition, and dismantle public education.

Tools to protect immigrant workers from labor law violations, like the Department of Homeland Security's Deferred Action for Labor Enforcement program, are likely to be shelved, along with speedy elections and other efforts at labor law enforcement that we have become used to from the NLRB. Mass deportations are unlikely, given that Trump’s corporate sponsors rely on the labor of immigrants for their profits. But some showy raids are likely, and the terror of arrests will make it even harder to stop abusive bosses—which is the main point of the policy, as Magaly Licolli writes. Solidarity will be needed from all of us.

But even an NLRB determined to enforce labor law has been unable to force big corporations like Amazon to comply, so it’s not clear that organizing these companies will be significantly harder with a hostile board. As Chris Bohner and Eric Blanc point out, it was during Trump’s first term that the “Red for Ed” illegal teacher strike wave swept the country.

Workers’ demands for union democracy have fueled more fights, more wins, higher expectations, and more new organizing. It’s obvious that workers want and need unions that can match and defeat the billionaires.

If there are enough of us, and our bonds are strong enough, bosses, politicians, and even the law will give way. As strikers proved, the power is in our hands.

A tribunal of trade arbitrators has ruled in favor of the United States in its complaint that Mexico’s restrictions on genetically modified corn violate the terms of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement, or USMCA. The long-awaited ruling in the 16-month trade dispute is unlikely to settle the questions raised by Mexico about the safety of consuming GM corn and its associated herbicide.

Indeed, the pro-U.S. ruling raises questions about the fairness of the USMCA itself, which has now legitimized the use of the agreement’s dispute process to challenge a domestic policy that barely affected trade. U.S. President-elect Donald Trump is now openly threatening Mexico with 25% tariffs on all Mexican exports, a blatant violation of the USMCA that Trump himself renegotiated and signed in 2018. Yet the treaty appears impotent to challenge such unilateral U.S. trade measures just as its tribunal slaps Mexico’s hand for its public health policies.

According to the U.S. government, the final report from the tribunal, announced December 20, ruled that “Mexico’s measures are not based on science and undermine the market access that Mexico agreed to provide in the USMCA.” In fact, the trade panel’s ruling was more limited, demanding that Mexico comply with the trade agreement’s procedures for carrying out risk assessments based on “relevant international scientific principles.”

Countries considering entering into trade agreements with the United States may now be more reluctant to do so if their domestic policies can be challenged in a trade court.

The Mexican government defended its position but vowed to comply with the ruling. “The Government of Mexico does not share the panel’s determination, as it considers that the measures in question are in line with the principles of protection of public health and the rights of Indigenous peoples, established in national legislation and in the international treaties to which it is a party,” read a statement following the ruling.

The ruling will not settle the debate over the health and environmental risks of GM corn and its associated herbicides, In the course of the dispute, Mexico produced extensive peer-reviewed scientific evidence that showed ample cause for precaution given the risks associated with both GM corn and its associated herbicide glyphosate. Recent studies have shown negative health impacts to the gastrointestinal tract and potential damage to the liver, kidneys, and other organs.

“[We] did an exhaustive review of the scientific literature,” explained María Elena Àlvarez-Buylla, the molecular geneticist who led Mexico’s national science agency, CONAHCYT, until October. “We concluded that the evidence was more than sufficient to restrict, out of precaution, the use of GM corn and its associated agro-chemical, glyphosate, in the country’s food supply chains.”

That evidence was presented in great detail to the tribunal in Mexico’s formal filings during the process, and it has now been published as a “Science Dossier.” It represents one of the most comprehensive reviews of the scientific evidence of the risks of GM corn and glyphosate to public health and the environment.

For its part, the U.S. government declined to present evidence that its GM corn with glyphosate residues is safe to eat in Mexico, where corn is consumed at more than 10 times the levels as in the United States and in minimally processed forms such as tortillas, not in processed foods.

“The research on the part of the U.S. was quite poor,” says Dr. Álvarez-Buylla, noting that U.S. research was outdated, ignored many recent studies, and depended on science that is “full of conflicts of interest.”

The U.S. government also failed to produce any evidence that Mexico’s February 2023 presidential decree had any meaningful impacts on U.S. exporters. U.S. corn exports have increased since the decree was enacted, not shrunk. The measures restricted only GM white corn use in tortillas, less than 1% of the U.S. corn exported to Mexico.

Early on in the dispute, Mexican Economy Minister Raquel Buenrostro stated that the U.S. needed to show “quantitatively, with numbers, something that has not occurred: that the corn decree has commercially affected” U.S. exporters. The U.S. has yet to produce any such evidence.

Meanwhile, president-elect Trump’s threatened tariffs are blatantly illegal under the USMCA and promise to inflict massive economic harm on Mexican exporters, and on U.S.-based firms that produce in Mexico.

The pro-U.S., pro-agrochemical industry ruling will ripple far beyond this dispute. Mexico’s documentation of the evidence of risk from GM corn and glyphosate should prompt consumers and governments the world over to take a closer look at these controversial products, and at the lax U.S. regulatory processes exposed by Mexico.

Countries considering entering into trade agreements with the United States may now be more reluctant to do so if their domestic policies can be challenged in a trade court. Kenya has been negotiating a trade agreement with the United States. Kenyans are already concerned the agreement will open Kenya to GM animal feeds, says Anne Maina of the Kenya Biodiversity and Biosafety Association. If the agreement can be used to challenge domestic policies, she says, it will be even less palatable.

It remains to be seen how the Mexican government will comply with the ruling. It has 45 days to respond. Already, President Claudia Sheinbaum has reiterated her support for a constitutional amendment to enshrine a ban on GM corn cultivation and consumption in tortillas. A “Right to Food” law passed last year mandates labeling of foods containing GMOs. No tortilla seller wants such a label on its products, because Mexican consumers are clear that they do not want GM corn in their tortillas.

The tribunal’s ruling will not undo the fact that Mexico’s precautionary policies are indeed justified by a wealth of scientific evidence. By allowing the trade agreement to undermine a domestic policy that barely affects trade, it will further tarnish the legitimacy of an agreement already seen as favoring multinational corporations over public health and the environment.

Dig, ponder, dig some more.

A year ago I wrote a column about some of the early moments of my growing up—not just memories but profound moments of awareness; flickers, you might say, of becoming who I am. I was 77 at the time. Now I’m... oh yeah, 78. Can you believe it? Another year is almost over. Holiday season shimmers, the smell of pine is in the air. It’s Christmas: a perfect time to open, once again, the stocking known as memory.

In last year’s column, I wrote about three childhood moments that created me as a person—or informed me that I had changed, moved forward in the process of becoming. These were moments of self-awareness. Gosh! I had no idea such a thing existed, but there I was at age six, playing “Red Rover” on my elementary-school playground with a bunch of other kids and I realized: I was part of something bigger than myself; I wasn’t alone. Run and play, laugh and love! It’s called “community” (I later learned).

The interesting part, for me, as I write about it six-plus decades later, is to be able to feel the moment of becoming—to feel it as a new chunk of being, given to me almost as a Christmas present.

A second moment of becoming: I was 10 and had gotten into a fight after school—with a good pal. Huh? I rode my bike home, parked in the alley behind my house, and stood there rubbing my bruised elbow, aswirl in confusion. Fighting is so stupid! I decided I would never fight again—or rather, knew I would never fight again. I knew I had changed.

The third moment I wrote about was when I was 13. I had just seen a strange, disturbing movie with my mother and sister called Imitation of Life. We had car trouble on the way home and as we waited for the repair work to be finished, a puzzling awareness hit me, totally out of the blue. “I’m a genius,” I told myself—not with a smirk that I’m smarter than you are, but just the opposite. I was overwhelmed. Life isn’t preset. It’s an endless flow of God-knows-what, and it’s up to me—it’s up to all of us—to assign meaning, as best we can, to what’s going on. We’re all creating the future, moment by moment, whether we know it or not.

Yikes. This was far more responsibility than I was comfortable with, but I was stuck with it. I pushed on with growing up. These were all private moments, quietly “me” in a way that was no one else’s business. But some inner balloon (pardon the childish metaphor) was getting ready to burst. I had lousy penmanship, but I was turning into a writer, even though I hardly knew it. In fact, I got a “D” in English in eighth grade because I just couldn’t grasp the rules of grammar that were dumped on us out of the bag of marbles called education. What the heck is a participle? What’s an indirect object?

Attention, grade fanatics: We all learn at our own speed and in our own way. Two years later, in 10th grade, one of the books we were assigned to read was The Diary of Anne Frank. Birth of a writer! Well, sort of. I was riveted by her words, by the details of her life she bequeathed the world—and I felt a deep compulsion to start my own journal.

It literally took a year of trying. I’d buy a 39-cent notebook and start putting pieces of my life into words, usually prefaced with the warning: “Private. Do not read!” I felt compelled to pump up the importance of what I was saying, to write from the perspective that my life was significant. And the journal would never last more than a day or two. I could feel the phoniness in my words and would stash the notebook on a shelf, to be forgotten. But I kept trying! Something in me was determined to make this process work—solely for myself, of course. Turns out that may be the hardest audience of all to win over.

And then—I’m 16 at this point, in 11th grade—something happened: I was certain, I was terrified, that I had failed a solid geometry test one day. When I got home, I opened a notebook and scribbled the words: “God, I am worried. Scared to death is more like it.”

And the words simply flowed. I couldn’t stop. I went on for four pages, writing about the test, writing about how lousy I was doing in my English class, and then... yee-haw! I started writing about my “barren social life”: about the all the parties I hadn’t been invited to and my fear that I was a lousy dancer. I wasn’t “trying” to say anything; I was just letting it all out, spewing my feelings with unchecked honesty.

Two days later I wrote a second entry. Turns out I actually did OK on the math test, much to my amazement. And I was feeling good. I wrote about driving to a Junior Achievement meeting with some friends and singing a bunch of inappropriate songs on the way home. I even inserted the lyrics into the notebook. Something was happening: I wasn’t trying to churn out “good writing.” I was simply writing—giving words to my emotions and bringing them to life. I was finding, as I put it many years later, my voice.

And yeah, this is what growing up is all about. There’s nothing special or unique about any of this—it’s just a smattering of specificity. The interesting part, for me, as I write about it six-plus decades later, is to be able to feel the moment of becoming—to feel it as a new chunk of being, given to me almost as a Christmas present, not by Santa but by Anne Frank... and so many others: my parents, of course. My friends. My teachers.

Indeed, I must take a moment to honor Mom and Dad. They gave me life, home, family—and something more: the permission, you might say, to go my own direction. This was not easy for them, especially for my mother, who was a devout Lutheran, who had to watch her son break from the church and head off in his own spiritual direction.

Among the books I read in high school, three of them had a serious impact on my becoming: The Age of Reason by Thomas Paine, 1984 by George Orwell and Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. Their words were rocks for me to grab as I climbed the mountain of my emerging life. At one point, as I was writing in my journal, I made the declaration that I was a non-conformist. And one of the final tasks I had to fulfill before I graduated was to write my senior paper: a big-deal assignment. The topic could be of my choosing, but I had to quote a number of recognized authors. I chose the above trio. The paper was called “Is a Man’s Mind His Own?”

Yes, I wrote, it is.

I had sort of known this all along, though without necessarily even wanting it to be the case, except, as a boy, having the right to misbehave. But this was a serious step beyond boyhood. It was my first real step into the public domain. Uh oh. Now what?

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump isn’t the cause of what ails America. He’s the consequence. The real causes go back four decades.

Let me start with a bit of family history. During the 1950s and 1960s, my father, Ed Reich, owned a shop on the main street from which he sold women’s clothing to the wives of factory workers.

This time of year reminds me of his anxious dependence on holiday sales (and in the days after Christmas, the frantic returns). Between Thanksgiving and Christmas, he needed to earn enough to pay the bills and have a sufficient sum to carry us through the first part of the following year.

It’s crucial that Democrats focus on reversing the staggering inequalities of this era and getting big money out of politics.

We weren’t rich but never felt poor, and our standard of living rose steadily through the 1950s and 1960s—as factory workers and their spouses did better and better.

This was an era when the income of a single factory worker or schoolteacher or baker or salesman or mechanic was enough to buy a home, have two cars, and raise a family.

For three decades after World War II, America created the largest middle class the world had ever seen. During those years, the earnings of the typical American worker doubled, just as the size of the American economy doubled.

Over the last 40 years, by contrast, the size of the economy has more than doubled again, but the earnings of the typical American have barely budged (adjusted for inflation). Most of the gains have gone to the top.

In the 1950s and 1960s, the CEOs of large corporations earned an average of about 20 times the pay of their typical worker. Now they rake in over 300 times the pay of an average worker.

In the 1950s and 1960s, the richest 1% of Americans took home about 10% of the nation’s total income. Today they take home more than the bottom 90% put together.

Then, the economy generated hope. Hard work paid off. The living standards of most people improved through their working lives. Their children enjoyed better lives than they had. Most felt that the rules of the economic game were basically fair.

Although many women, Black people, and Latinos were still blocked from getting a fair share of the economy’s gains, the nation committed itself to changing this. New laws guaranteed equal opportunity, barred discrimination, promoted affirmative action, and expanded educational opportunity for all.

Today, confidence in the economic system has sharply declined. Its apparent arbitrariness and unfairness have undermined the public’s faith in it. Cynicism abounds. Equal opportunity is no longer high on the nation’s agenda.

As you’ll see in “The Big Picture” video above, recent American history can be divided into five periods:

1. 1946-1979, we grew together. Almost everyone gained ground.
2. 1980-2008, the great U-turn. Most economic gains began going to the top.
3. 2008-2010, the financial crisis. The banks were bailed out, but millions of Americans lost their jobs, homes, and savings. The experience revealed the gross inequalities of wealth and power that underlay the new economy. This caused widespread disillusionment with the system.
4. 2010-2016, anger at the establishment. Both Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Donald Trump emerged as anti-establishment candidates—although Trump’s anti-establishment persona was fake (and still is).
5. 2016-2050, the choice between oligarchy and democracy. The 2024 election represented a lurch toward oligarchy, but I believe Trump and his oligarchy will overreach, and we’ll choose a more robust democracy.

***

When most people stop believing that they and their children have a fair chance to make it, the tacit social contract begins to unravel. And a nation becomes susceptible to demagogues such as Donald Trump peddling the politics of hate.

Many of the most vocal proponents of the “free market”—including Elon Musk, executives of large corporations and their ubiquitous lawyers and lobbyists, denizens of Wall Street and their political lackeys, and numerous multimillionaires and billionaires—have been actively reorganizing the market for their own benefit.

The consequence has been a market created by those with great wealth for the purpose of further increasing their wealth.

This has resulted in ever-larger upward distributions inside the market, from the middle class, working class, and poor to a wealthy minority at the top.

Because these distributions occur inside the market, they have largely escaped notice. We tend to debate only downward “redistributions” that occur outside the market, through taxing the rich and transferring some benefits to the poor and working class.

Musk and Trump want to reduce such redistributions.

But the hidden upward redistributions inside the market are arguably larger.

This is why it’s so important that those of us who care about social justice speak out and explain what has happened. And why it’s crucial that Democrats focus on reversing the staggering inequalities of this era and getting big money out of politics.

Otherwise, the only explanation most Americans receive for what has happened comes from Trump authoritarians who falsely blame immigrants, “socialists,” the “deep state,” “woke”ism, Democrats, Black people, women, and other countries.

And the only agenda most Americans receive for remedying what has occurred is by backing Trump and Musk and their lurch toward fascism.

My friends, the underlying issue is not the size of government. It’s whom the government is for. The fundamental choice is democracy or oligarchy.

Strange now to think of you while I read the words of a Jewish poet long gone on his boat of metaphors and flowers for the constant beat of time and all it brings forth. I think of you and how once you flourished there beside the sea despite the ever-tightening constraints placed upon you by the hateful gods of Zion. They tried to make you yield to oppression. They took away your freedom. They took away your land, parcel by parcel. They torched your olive trees, burned your crops, bulldozed your homes, sexually assaulted your men and women, killed your children, invaded your towns and villages, while the world looked on and looked away and excused crimes against you, your wanton destruction as the necessary acts of a persecuted people fighting back against the terrorists in their midst—you, the people of Gaza.

They said your children are destined to become terrorists, so even newborns are legitimate targets. So too are the mothers who have brought them into the world and will turn them into killers and haters of Israeli Jews, decreed the gods of Zion. But you will never be gone no matter how many martyrs they make, no matter how many loved ones they take from you while their people cheer the killing, salute the killers, treat them as heroes, bring their children to watch you dying, teach them to see you as vermin, animals, sub-humans not worth a single shekel of mercy. There are days when I can understand how Aaron Bushnell, a U.S. Air Force servicemember, could light himself on fire in front of the Israeli Embassy in Washington D.C. The genocide was more than he could bear. And his fiery exit from our world was an expression of his principled opposition to this genocide.

Who can doubt his death by self-immolation was also a cry from the heart for the suffering of your people, Gaza. The flames that engulfed Aaron are the same flames rising among families in Gaza, families sheltering in tents or huddling in whatever homes have not yet been bombed, shelled, hit with a Hellfire missile. Like Aaron, like so many others, I grieve. Am filled with rage for what could only happen with the full approval and backing of my own government, a willing accomplice to genocide.

I can imagine that within their suffering, there must be a much greater force, one that draws its power from the land and the culture that has shaped them. And it is this force, this fire that must not be extinguished for it is the thing that gives hope to marginalized, dispossessed people.

While an entire people is being inexorably exterminated, I go about my life feeling powerless to make any significant difference in the lives of Palestinians stripped of dignity, herded into enclaves where the killers can more easily and comfortably complete their tasks with no limit on the amount of suffering they can inflict. I can rail against the murderers and their overlords and those who cheer them on from Washington to Tel Aviv. But what good does railing do when so many are starving, bleeding out on hospital floors, caught in the gunsights of snipers and quadcopter drones, torn to pieces or incinerated in the flames from a missile attack while lying asleep in some thin tissue of a tent.

It is the children who weigh most heavily on my heart. Your children, Gaza. Not even their tender, untested lives are safe from the bullet's wrath, the bomb's fiery breath, the hatred that pours from the very souls of those people we claim are only defending themselves. Children. Like the children I see every day in the town where I live. I watch them in the local bakery whooping with delight at displays of beautifully crafted pastries. Some of them come straight from their dancing class still dressed in slippers and tights and skirts trimmed with sparkling costume jewels. And the parents, credit cards at the ready, are quick to indulge their children's sweetest tooth.

There are almost no bakeries left in your towns and villages, Gaza, where children can pick out their favorite sweet or pastry and hold it in their hands as the children do here knowing after it's gone, there will always be another. Those bakeries that have not been destroyed have had to close their doors because of flour and fuel shortages caused by Israel's blockade. In the north, there was one bakery where families could find bread. And then the Israelis bombed the warehouse where the flour was kept. In March, they gunned down men and women waiting for a convoy of trucks to deliver priceless bags of flour and other forms of aid. How can I not think of you, Gaza, each time I cut into a loaf of bread or lift a sweet roll to my lips. I see your children holding out empty bowls and pots as they clamor around a charity kitchen and push for a helping of the day's fare. But the day may come when there will no more such kitchens and no more cauldrons of soup or vegetable stew. Already a famine is spreading from one end of your land to the other, and starvation, the weapon of choice by Zion's holy warriors, may very well "finish the job." And should that happen, clean-up crews from the Promised Land will scrub the stones till no trace of blood remains. Tons of rubble will give rise to lofty towers and luxury apartments. On holidays, settler families will take their kids down to the sea and let them scour the beach for trinkets—a doll, a bracelet, a shiny ring. Things from a time when other children, long gone from Gaza, played in the waves and flew their kites on ocean breezes as signs of their presence and the angels who loved them. While the ghosts of all the martyrs, scooped from their graves, will haunt the wind with a long lament for the life they lost when the killers came.

Have I arrived at the place where Aaron Bushnell came to, the place where he knew he could no longer accept the deliberate immolation of families by America's closest ally and the refusal of the world's greatest power to lift a finger in defense of Palestinian life? No. I walk on, yet ashamed to be a citizen of this place, my country. As I was ashamed at 25 and traveling overseas with a freshly printed passport while my country was at war in Vietnam, a war the International War Crimes Tribunal in 1967 found met the definition of genocide. And again, 25 years later, in Iraq's public hospitals, the same shame followed me as I visited the pediatric wards. The wards were strangely, unnaturally silent. Mothers and grandmothers could do nothing but hold the hands of their loved ones or wipe their brows with a damp cloth because no medicine would be coming, and it was only a matter of time before the children would all be dead. That time, in Iraq, it wasn't Israel withholding aid but America, and as in Gaza, it was the young, the elderly, the sick, the poor who were the first to suffer and to die.

I walk on, knowing there is no justification for what Israel has done, is doing to your children, Gaza. From afar, I see men searching for survivors of another attack. One of the men finds a child by a pile of rubble. As he lifts her up, her arms collapse at her side. Her head falls back. Her eyes, once glistening with life and the light of childhood, stare up at the heavens where no gods reside and the only inhabitants are stone-cold killers throwing down whatever will deprive your people, Gaza, of the will to live... of life itself.

So, yes, I rage. I grieve. But my grief is nothing next to those who find their spouses or their children wrapped in bloody shrouds and left among the dead. My grief is nothing beside the mother whose child is withering away, his body a mere outline of bones, his heart a tattered flag soon to be set free, his arms too weak to even lift his voice beyond a whispered cry. But she has no food to give him. It has all been taken away as part of a glorious plan to which Yahweh has given His seal of approval, or so the story has been told and the generals of Zion agree. What would I do if I were sheltering in a school among dozens of families hoping to survive another night under relentless bombardment? And should the school be hit, and men, women, and children ripped apart, decapitated, how then would I grieve in the midst of this carnage? For that matter, if the people I most dearly love were among the dead in whatever is left of this shelter, would I have the strength to carry on or would my grief, like a bird of prey, sink its talons into me and not let go till it drops me into a pit of my own oblivion?

Here, in this sun-filled room, I have no fear of winter. No matter how cold it gets, I can simply adjust the thermostat in my home or put another blanket on the bed. But for you, Gaza, there are no thermostats and no cozy, indoor gatherings of families and friends, sharing glasses of steaming hot tea and slices of crunchy, sugary knafeh. Ninety percent of your people are displaced and facing another winter of harsh rains and falling temperatures without adequate shelter, warm blankets, sources of heat, and enough food to prevent malnutrition. Families in tent encampments along the coast have no defense against rising tides that can flood the tents and wash away clothing and bedding, and even pull little children out to sea. No matter how immiserated the people of Gaza become, no matter how violently they shiver night after winter night in leaky, patched up tents, their suffering is never too much for the armed forces of Zion. The bombs continue to fall, the missiles continue to find their mark, and extended families continue to be blown apart in the name of fighting Hamas—that elusive, shape-shifting entity whose command centers can magically assume the form of a school or hospital, and just as easily shape shift into an outdoor market or apartment building where extended families may be sheltering.

I saw footage of a field trip in which students came to the Israeli town of Sderot to "watch the genocide" from an observation deck. Using coin-operated binoculars, the students searched for signs of the suffering taking place in northern Gaza in which thousands of Palestinians are trapped and being deliberately starved to death. But the horror wasn't visible, and the students came away disappointed. They would need a different set of eyes to see what you're going through, Gaza. And even then, they might not understand or be moved.

Fourteen months of war have left behind an estimated 46 million tons of rubble. That much can be seen with the naked eye. What can't be seen are the estimated 10,000 victims—from the very young to the very old—buried under concrete slabs, twisted metal rods, tin roofs, asbestos, and other contaminants. The amount of debris is so great, if it could be bulldozed into one enormous heap, there would be enough material to fill Egypt's largest pyramid 11 times. The bodies of the men, women, and children entombed within that ravaged land may never be recovered or given a proper burial.

To paraphrase a line from the poet Wallace Stevens, there is the rubble we can see and the rubble we can't. I am many, many times removed from the extreme suffering your people face each day of their lives, Gaza. I can only imagine that in their hearts, that other kind of rubble exists—a great expanse of smoldering fires, heaps of shattered dreams, jagged shards of trauma and loss, bloody pieces of a life that once was whole. And no place safe to go, not even in the furthest depths of one's very soul. There are no machines that can clear away this sort of rubble or convert it into new, life-giving, life-supportive structures where hopes and aspirations can once again take root and flourish. But there is compassion and mercy, the promise of peace and the path to restorative justice.

Should a time ever come when Netanyahu, his generals, and his accomplices in Berlin and Washington D.C. are called to account for their crimes, a god worthy of the name would need to look very deeply into the hearts of those who have destroyed Gaza. Would she find within her otherworldly being the capacity to forgive the Israeli soldiers who murdered children in cold blood, stormed the hospitals, ordered the evacuation of patients, including those who could barely walk or were desperately ill? Would she forgive the pilots flying drones or actual aircraft who deliberately bombed civilian targets, whether a school, a hospital, even tents sheltering families who had nowhere else to go but a designated "safe zone"—in effect, a kill zone? Would she forgive the military masterminds who drew up the battle plans, the members of the Knesset who sanctioned genocide and called it self-defense? Would she forgive Joe Biden and other Western leaders who continued to arm Israel even as it committed war crimes and crimes against humanity? And what of the Israeli citizens for whom the daily massacres of your people, Gaza, were occasions to celebrate, to rejoice in the power and glory of the IDF and the blessed patrimony handed down from God to the chosen people, according to the Torah and other sacred Jewish texts?

I raise these questions but have no answer. Nor can I proclaim the greatness of God as I would if I were a religious Jew reciting the Kaddish for someone who has died. I can, however, proclaim the greatness of the Palestinian people, their strong ties to the land of their ancestors, and their refusal to submit to occupation and oppression. I praise the families of Gaza who have endured hunger, illness, displacement, trauma, and the cruelty of Israel's assault that spares no one, not even the newborn child, or the old man or woman forced to evacuate whatever shelter has become their home. I cannot even begin to fathom the depth of the suffering of these families or the reserves of courage and faith that must sustain them. But I can imagine that within their suffering, there must be a much greater force, one that draws its power from the land and the culture that has shaped them. And it is this force, this fire that must not be extinguished for it is the thing that gives hope to marginalized, dispossessed people.

I praise the many Palestinian doctors, nurses, medics, first responders who risk their lives every day that others may live. I praise the teachers in Gaza who continue to set up makeshift classrooms so children can continue their education even while schools have been systematically destroyed by the Israeli military. I praise the Palestinian journalists who do not let the murder of their colleagues keep them from reporting the truth about Israel's reign of terror. I praise Fadel Nabhani, a young man in Gaza. Besides caring for his family, he is doing all he can to provide food for cats and other animals that would otherwise die from hunger. Fadel also tries to take care of sick cats even though medicine, like food, is increasingly unavailable.

I praise Luay and Najah, adult siblings who are lifelong farmers. Originally from north Gaza, they have been displaced four times with their respective families. One day, while searching for firewood in the southern city of Rafah, it occurred to Najah that she and her brother could continue doing what had always given their lives purpose and meaning—farming. With seeds they had brought with them from Beit Lahiya in the north, they planted radishes, wild garlic, Swiss chard, beans, tomatoes, and herbs, including mint and thyme. Najah has said that each time she places a seed in the soil she prays to God to feed their families and also the birds. Despite the constant threat from Israeli missiles, their hard work yielded an abundant harvest—enough to sustain themselves, their relatives, and their neighbors. That mattered more to them than selling their crop in the market.

The fourth time they were displaced, Najah, Luay, and their families ended up living in tents on barren land mostly consisting of sand. They could have given up and relied on whatever food supplies made it through the Israeli checkpoints. Instead, they got to work, reciting a prayer for each seed they planted. Once again, their devotion to the land, their love of farming, and their desire to provide for as many people as they could... bore fruit.

This too exemplifies the spirit of resistance that is up against the tanks, bombs, missiles, and bottomless cruelty of the Israeli state, its violation of international human rights law, and its ongoing program of ethnic cleansing in Gaza. I stand with those who recognize this gross disparity, support the right of Palestinians to resist the annexation of their land and the destruction of their society, and oppose the U.S. role in arming the perpetrator of genocide.

Amen.

Early this month Luigi Mangione, 26, University of Pennsylvania graduate, allegedly gunned down CEO of UnitedHealthcare, Brian Thompson, 50. The public response has been varied, with many supporting Mangione. Some fear the positive regard of Mangione is indicative of a shift into a new era where violence is glorified and humanity is lost. As a sociology professor who teaches Poverty, Wealth, and Privilege, I disagree. This failure of subsets of the public to broadly denounce the actions of Mangione does not herald a cultural shift in appreciation of violence.

Instead this unusual display of class consciousness reflects two things. First, the reaction is due to the shift in who bore the cost of violence. Class under-resourced; Black, Indigenous, Latinx and people of color; women; and queer and trans people are the normal recipients of societal violence. Wealthy, cishet, white men in positions of power are not. Wealthy, white communities are conditioned to expect protection, and the revocation of that sheltering is rare.

Second, the working classes are weary from surviving an unnecessarily violent and unjust society. We live amid staggering class, race, and gender-based stratification and life and death stakes everyday. The ruling class profits from our blood, sweat, and tears. And yet, when one of the elite passes, they want us to give them more. They ask us to give them our love. Yet, they remain calloused to our pain and ignore our pleas for fairness.

We, as a community, might ask, how are the elite and their apologists not appalled by a harm-rich system that normalizes the idea that humans are only as valuable as their economic worth?

We all deserve the same sanctity of life given to wealthy insiders. However, when it comes to many of our social systems, such as healthcare, respect and care are not institutionalized; instead, harm is normalized. We see “out-sized returns” to private equity investors.

Recently, a magician performed at a kid’s birthday party. Magic tricks work through deception. A magician distracts the audience to hide what else they are doing. Similar dynamics play out in our public life. The wealth gap continues to grow, yet we voted in a billionaire to be president. The public is shamed for failing to appropriately sympathize with Brian Thompson and his family, yet everyday targeted attacks and systemic neglect accumulate to harm and render disposable historically and strategically marginalized communities, such as class under-resourced, BIPOC, women, and trans and queer people.

Let us stop this charade. Our healthcare system is not pro-health. The World Health Organization (WHO) names universal healthcare as a worldwide goal. The United States has not complied. Most Americans are insured through private companies. Many Americans struggle to pay for healthcare, they postpone receiving care, and are in medical debt. The healthcare system has practices, such as using AI to deny a high number of healthcare claims, which put profits over people. There is something deeply inhumane and harmful about this disregard for health in a healthcare system. It may not be illegal, but it is savage.

The elite and their apologists ask, “How could they not be appalled by Thompson’s murder?” Instead we, as a community, might ask, how are the elite and their apologists not appalled by a harm-rich system that normalizes the idea that humans are only as valuable as their economic worth? Decades ago, Larry Summers, currently on the board of directors of OpenAI, famously wrote that people who produce less are more expendable. This classist ideology pervades our healthcare system.

To honor Brian Thompson, and to ensure his death is not in vain, we can engage in the needed conversation about the extreme depravity of our healthcare system which his death revitalized. A path forward that reforms a calloused healthcare system can provide benefits to all of us. Those among us who deeply mourn Brian’s death can take solace that it can impart a legacy of positive, sustainable, and overdue social change. Those among us who view Mangione’s action as predictable, if not understandable, can appreciate the same reform.

To be sure, there are people who claim that human fallibility is a predestined curse that we cannot overcome, that we are born sinners and that we cannot do better than prioritize greed over care of each other, even within our healthcare system. There will be those of us who feel that disproportionate wealth is a triumph and that our healthcare should reflect the position we hold in our socioeconomic system. However, 73 countries have universal healthcare, including China, Russia, Mexico and Canada. Us Americans are also worthy.

Wealthy and powerful people are the most protected against societal harms, and they also have disproportionate control over them. We need the CEOs, billionaires, and other power elites to do better. The system does not have a great way to hold those in charge accountable for bad behavior. Can they figure out a way to hold themselves accountable? Can they reorganize to prioritize care, a virtue, over greed, a vice, in our healthcare system? If they are immune to this self-correcting recovery, we need to organize around collective action, such as voting, for example for single-payer healthcare, because our lives depend on it. We don’t want anyone dying in the street. We also don’t want anyone dying or in pain due to a broken so-called healthcare system.

Democracy decays into oligarchy when a few individuals accumulate most of the political power.

The reelection of Donald Trump has accelerated the decline of the United States into oligarchy. Trump has had billionaire donors for each of his presidential campaigns, but in 2024 the role of these wealthy donors expanded. Donors such as Elon Musk made gigantic contributions to Trump’s campaign; in return for this they are taking an active role in the Trump White House. Perhaps, this time around, Trump turned the oval office into a time-share.

On December 19, Elon Musk led the call for House Republicans to repudiate a continuing resolution they had just negotiated to keep the federal government running through the end of the year. Perhaps Musk’s charter includes coordination with Congress.

When Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy speak of increasing government efficiency, they usually start with services for the unfortunate.

It appears that Trump has entered into a power-sharing agreement with Musk and several other wealthy individuals including Vivek Ramaswamy, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and David Sacks. However this arrangement works, it’s likely that the Trump administration will cater to billionaires—Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) observed that the 13 billionaires chosen by Trump to serve in his administration have a combined wealth of at least $383 billion.

What do these billionaires want? The oligarchs and billionaires want lower taxes and reduced government regulations. Of course, each billionaire has a particular set of interests; for example, David Sacks, Trump’s “AI and crypto czar,” is a venture capitalist with heavy investment in AI and crypto. Sadly. most of the oligarchs are climate-change deniers.

The oligarchs want more wealth. Robert Reich observes:

Since [1980], the median wage of the bottom 90% has stagnated. The share of the nation’s wealth owned by the richest 400 Americans has quadrupled (from less than 1% to 3.5%) while the share owned by the entire bottom half of America has dropped to 1.3%… The richest 1% of Americans now has more wealth than the bottom 90% combined.

The oligarchs share a fiscally conservative agenda. They intend to shrink the size of the federal government. The particulars vary but the oligarchs are not concerned with the size of the defense budget; their cost-cutting focus is on programs that service the poor and disadvantaged—such as Medicaid. When Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy speak of increasing government efficiency, they usually start with services for the unfortunate.

What are the practical consequences of this shift to oligarchy? It’s unsettling to be in a political situation where we do not understand who is in charge at the White House. We don’t know how power-sharing will work. The relationship between Trump and Congress has been fraught. The shift to oligarchy will make this relationship even more difficult.

Will the oligarchs fix the economy? Trump was elected because he promised to fix the economy. Most Americans believed he would drive down inflation; they thought Trump would reduce the cost of food, housing, and household and medical expenses. Since November 5, Trump has given no indication of how he plans to do this. Perhaps he has lost interest.

During the presidential campaign, Trump said his inflation-fighting agenda would rely upon tariffs, but it’s likely that the oligarchs will influence how Trump’s tariff strategy plays out. Musk has huge business interests in China, and it’s unlikely that he would support a tariff policy that would hurt his relationships with the country.

Trump has appointed a “czar” for immigration (Tom Homan), energy (Doug Burgum), and AI & Crypto (Sacks). Trump has not appointed a czar for inflation. With much fanfare, Trump has appointed a commission on “government efficiency;” they’ve already started meeting. Trump has not appointed to a commission to curb inflation.

After January 20, Trump will own inflation and the economy. Trump’s immigration “purge” will drive up the cost of food. Trump’s tariffs will drive up the cost of household expenses.

Trump’s trying to ignore inflation. Or turn it over to an oligarch co-president. Stay tuned.

There’s only one person in this photograph of a recent G7 meeting who represents a country where an illness can destroy an entire family, leaving them bankrupt and homeless, with the repercussions of that sudden fall into poverty echoing down through generations.

Most Americans have no idea that the United States is quite literally the only country in the developed world that doesn’t define healthcare as an absolute right for all of its citizens. That’s it. We’re the only one left.

The United States spends more on “healthcare” than any other country in the world: about 17% of GDP.

Medicare For All, like Canada has, would save American families thousands every year immediately and do away with the 500,000+ annual bankruptcies in this country that happen only because somebody in the family got sick.

Switzerland, Germany, France, Sweden, and Japan all average around 11%, and Canada, Denmark, Belgium, Austria, Norway, Netherlands, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and Australia all come in between 9.3% and 10.5%.

Health insurance premiums right now make up about 22% of all taxable payroll, whereas Medicare For All would run an estimated 10%.

We are literally the only developed country in the world with an entire multi-billion-dollar for-profit industry devoted to parasitically extracting money from us to then turn over to healthcare providers on our behalf. The for-profit health insurance industry has attached itself to us like a giant, bloodsucking tick.

And it’s not like we haven’t tried.

Presidents Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Jack Kennedy, and Lyndon Johnson all proposed and made an effort to bring a national healthcare system to the United States. Here’s one example really worth watching where President Kennedy is pushing a single-payer system (as opposed to Britain’s “socialist” model):

They all failed, and when I did a deep dive into the topic two years ago for my book The Hidden History of American Healthcare I found two major barriers to our removing that tick from our backs.

The early opposition, more than 100 years ago, to a national healthcare system came from Southern white congressmen (they were all men) and senators who didn’t want even the possibility that Black people could benefit, health-wise, from white people’s tax dollars. (This thinking apparently still motivates many white Southern politicians.)

The leader of that healthcare-opposition movement in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was a German immigrant named Frederick Hoffman, as I mentioned in a recent newsletter. Hoffman was a senior executive for the Prudential Insurance Company, and wrote several books about the racial inferiority of Black people, a topic he traveled the country lecturing about.

His most well-known book was titled Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro. It became a major best-seller across America when it was first published for the American Economic Association by the Macmillan Company in 1896, the same year the Supreme Court’s Plessy v. Ferguson decision legally turned the entire U.S. into an apartheid state.

Hoffman taught that Black people, in the absence of slavery, were so physically and intellectually inferior to whites that if they were simply deprived of healthcare the entire race would die out in a few generations. Denying healthcare to Black people, he said, would solve the “race problem” in America.

Southern politicians quoted Hoffman at length, he was invited to speak before Congress, and was hailed as a pioneer in the field of “scientific racism.” Race Traits was one of the most influential books of its era.

By the 1920s, the insurance company he was a vice president of was moving from life insurance into the health insurance field, which brought an added incentive to lobby hard against any sort of a national healthcare plan.

Which brings us to the second reason America has no national healthcare system: profits.

“Dollar” Bill McGuire, a recent CEO of America’s largest health insurer, UnitedHealth, made about $1.5 billion dollars during his time with that company. To avoid prosecution in 2007 he had to cough up $468 million, but still walked away a billionaire. Stephen J Hemsley, his successor, made off with around half a billion.

And that’s just one of multiple giant insurance companies feeding at the trough of your healthcare needs.

Much of that money, and the pay for the multiple senior executives at that and other insurance companies who make over $1 million a year, came from saying “No!” to people who file claims for payment of their healthcare costs.

This became so painful for Cigna Vice President Wendell Potter that he resigned in disgust after a teenager he knew was denied payment for a transplant and died. He then wrote a brilliant book about his experience in the industry: Deadly Spin: An Insurance Company Insider Speaks Out on How Corporate PR Is Killing Healthcare and Deceiving Americans.

Companies offering such “primary” health insurance simply don’t exist (or are tiny) in almost every other developed country in the world. Mostly, where they do exist, they serve wealthier people looking for “extras” beyond the national system, like luxury hospital suites or air ambulances when overseas. (Switzerland is the outlier with exclusively private insurance, but it’s subsidized, mandatory, and nonprofit.)

If Americans don’t know this, they intuit it.

In the 2020 election there were quite a few issues on statewide ballots around the country. Only three of them outpolled President Joe Biden’s win, and expanding Medicaid to cover everybody was at the top of that list. (The other two were raising the minimum wage and legalizing pot.)

The last successful effort to provide government funded, single-payer healthcare insurance was when Lyndon Johnson passed Medicare and Medicaid (both single-payer systems) in the 1960s. It was a hell of an effort, but the health insurance industry was then a tiny fraction of its current size.

In 1978, when conservatives on the Supreme Court legalized corporations owning politicians with their Buckley v Belotti decision (written by Justice Louis Powell of “Powell Memo” fame), they made the entire process of replacing a profitable industry with government-funded programs like single-payer vastly more difficult, regardless of how much good they may do for the citizens of the nation.

The court then doubled-down on that decision in 2010, when the all-conservative vote on Citizens United cemented the power of billionaires and giant corporations to own politicians and even write and influence legislation and the legislative process.

Medicare For All, like Canada has, would save American families thousands every year immediately and do away with the 500,000+ annual bankruptcies in this country that happen only because somebody in the family got sick. But it would kill the billions every week in profits of the half-dozen corporate giants that dominate the health insurance industry.

This won’t be happening with a billionaire in the White House, but if we want to bring America into the 21st century with the next administration, we need to begin working, planning, and waking up voters now.

It’ll be a big lift: Keep it on your radar and pass it along.

           Non-voters are the biggest (potential) voting bloc in American politics. In midterm, state and local elections, more eligible voters choose not to exercise their franchise than to do so.

            Pundits and political sociologists ignore non-voters. Nobody polls them. Nobody asks them why they don’t vote. Nobody asks them what issues they care about. Nobody asks them what it would take to get them to vote, or who they would vote for if they did. Whether this lack of interest in non-voters is due to a lack of imagination or contempt based on the belief that they are lazy and apathetic, the result is that we don’t know much about the political leanings and motivations (or lack thereof) of the majority of our fellow citizens. There are tens of millions of them. They are an untapped resource and, until recently, there has been little attempt to reach out to them.

            Democratic Party strategists largely assume that there is little point dedicating precious campaign resources to an attempt to lure non-voters to the polls. From Bill Clinton in 1992 to Kamala Harris in 2024, the party has been primarily focused on trying to appeal to swing voters and moderate Republicans, even though there don’t seem to be very many of them.

            Donald Trump’s first win disproved the hypothesis that you can’t get the third or more of eligible citizens who normally sit out presidential elections to come to the polls. 15% of the people who cast a ballot in November 2016 were first-time voters, up from 9% in 2012. True, Donald Trump’s coalition included people who vote Republican no matter what as well as traditional conservatives. But the key to his takeover of the GOP was his ability to motivate people who previously weren’t even registered to vote.

            The 2016 election also highlighted the political impact of non-voting. Non-voters skewed Democratic, accounting for 55% as opposed to 41% for Republicans. Hillary Clinton lost because she wasn’t able to motivate enough of her own party’s supporters.

            The cliché of the non-voter is that they are politically disengaged. If that is true, it falls short of painting the full picture. 3.5% of those who voted for Bernie Sanders in the 2016 primaries sat out the general election; they were more than enough to cost Clinton the race. But primary voters are far more engaged than general election voters. They didn’t forget to vote for Hillary. They made an active choice to be passive because they disliked both major-party candidates.

            Non-voters were even more powerful this year. An astonishing 19 million Americans who voted for Joe Biden in 2020 considered the choice between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump and picked the couch.

She lost by 2.3 million votes.

            These 19 million people were registered to vote. We know that they know how to vote; they did it four years ago in the middle of a pandemic. And we know that they voted Democratic! More states have early voting and mail-in ballots, so it was easier to vote in 2024. Logically, a more appealing Democrat than Kamala Harris might have received their support.

            A full picture of American public opinion would include numerous thorough studies and surveys of people who sometimes vote and sit out elections at other times (this year’s Trump campaign reached out to these “irregular” and “low propensity” voters), those who never vote but are registered to vote, and those who are not registered. But the biggest factor here is obviously the defining characteristic of U.S. electoral politics: the two-party system. Democracies with two-party systems tend to have lower voter turnout than parliamentary democracies where multiple parties representing a wide range of ideological orientations are viable and active participants. The increasing percentage of Americans who self-identify as “independent” means that it is constantly less likely that a voter will agree with one of the two candidates of two polarized parties.

            In a two-party system like ours, a voter who doesn’t much care for either candidate has three choices. They can suck it up and choose “the lesser evil,” vote for a third-party candidate who almost certainly doesn’t stand a chance, or sit out the election.

A significant subset of the first category is the negative message voter, who casts a ballot for the challenger in order to indicate their displeasure with the incumbent. With only two parties to choose from, these voters flail back-and-forth. Since a vote is a vote and doesn’t come with a footnote attached to it, neither the parties nor the news media ever receives the message. As more voters realize the futility of rage and spite voting, there is a general trend toward not voting at all.

            Because they are oblivious to the left-leaning voters they are failing to motivate, Democrats have more to worry about in the short term. In the long run, however, the realization that non-voters are making an active choice not to bother with the political system is a major warning that the whole system may not be viable for much longer.

(Ted Rall (Twitter: @tedrall), the political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, co-hosts the left-vs-right DMZ America podcast with fellow cartoonist Scott Stantis and The TMI Show with political analyst Manila Chan. His latest book, brand-new right now, is the graphic novel 2024: Revisited.)

The post Theory of the Non-Voter first appeared on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

The post Theory of the Non-Voter appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

At the beginning of 2024, Amazon reported $10.6 billion in profits during the fourth quarter of the previous year, an unexpected level of success which Andrew Jassy, the company’s CEO, attributed to the company’s 14% growth from last year in holiday season sales. Holiday shopping has long been crucial to Amazon’s business model, so much so that Amazon announced in October its intention to hire 250,000 more workers nationwide for the holiday season. But at JFK-8—the Staten Island fulfillment center where workers became the first employees in Amazon’s history to win union recognition in 2022, and have yet to reach a contract agreement with the company—workers have only seen their workloads increase, and are struggling amid greater productivity demands from management.

“During this time of the year, health and safety goes out the window,” says Tristan Martinez, a six-year Amazon employee and organizer for the Amazon Labor Union (ALU). “It’s all about pushing the numbers so they [management] can get their bonuses.”

During “peak” season, the time between Amazon Prime Day (a two day Prime Member exclusive event, during which Amazon promises “epic deals on top brands”) in October and the holidays, Amazon forces its associates across the country to work overtime. This increased demand for labor starts around Prime Day and ramps up as the holiday season approaches. Workers I spoke to at JFK-8 reported shifts up to 12 hours long, with one 30-minute and two 15-minute breaks, five days a week.

Amazon warehouse workers were nearly twice as likely to be injured as workers at other warehouses in the industry.

For most of their shifts, Amazon warehouse workers are on their feet, picking items from inventory and preparing them to get picked out, packing them, and loading them on Amazon’s blue trucks. Several workers I spoke to make long commutes from neighborhoods such as Canarsie, Harlem, and Crown Heights, which usually take upwards of two hours. If they’re lucky with the timing of bus and subway transfers, they would get home at around 9 p.m. that night, only to embark on their commute eight short hours later for the start of another 12-hour shift at 7 a.m.

“We’re not machines. Everyone has their own circumstances,” Jasmine Youma, who has worked as a picker and packer at Amazon for over a year, told me as she rushed into a crowded bus.

She wasn’t the only Amazon worker I spoke to who felt the need to remind me she was human. “They think we’re robots,” said Shayna, a packer of five years who asked that her last name not be used. “If you’re not hitting the numbers, they’ll come out and talk to you.”

Workers across the board feel dehumanized. “Productivity manager to associate relationships are very robotic,” says Jaquan Taylor, who has worked at Amazon for six years. “In order to work as a manager here, you have to lose all sense of humanity.” According to some Amazon associates, the increased productivity demands result in less workplace safety. “They talk about safety, but when it’s time to apply safety, they only look at the numbers,” says Terry, a processing assistant of four years who asked that her last name not be used.

This month, the United States Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, led by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), released a report on workplace safety at Amazon Warehouses. The committee found that Amazon warehouse workers were nearly twice as likely to be injured as workers at other warehouses in the industry.

The Senate’s report corroborates the sentiments expressed by Jasmine, Shayna, Jaquan, Terry, and Tristan, finding that “workers are forced to choose between following safety procedures and risking discipline and potential termination for not moving fast enough.” The report also states that Amazon is aware of the dangers to worker safety associated with their productivity demands, but manipulates data to make the problem look less severe.

As a result, Amazon workers all over the world have been organizing for better working conditions. JFK-8 made history two years ago by becoming the first unionized Amazon Warehouse in the United States. Amazon unsuccessfully attempted to overturn the National Labor Relation Board (NLRB) election result in 2022, and has since has since refused to recognize the Amazon Labor Union (ALU) and begin contract negotiations, in defiance of the NLRB's orders. In 2024, the company joined SpaceX and Trader Joe’s in filing a federal lawsuit against the NLRB, alleging that the agency’s structure is unconstitutional.

If the courts rule in Amazon’s favor, labor activists fear that it could undo a century of progress on workers’ rights in the United States. Legal actions have not deterred Amazon workers from organizing, with new unions forming in Atlanta, City of Industry, and San Bernardino with the help of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. On December 21, 2024, Amazon Teamsters at JFK-8 began their strike, joining eight other Amazon warehouses in California, New York, and Illinois.

At JFK-8, the NLRB found that Amazon retaliates against employees who support the union. The union contends that several organizers have been terminated for their union activity, among them Christian Smalls, Sultana Hossain, and Pasquale Cioffi. Martinez, who has been involved in organizing at JFK-8 since 2020, describes his experience as “coming every day with a target on your back. That’s what it’s like working here whether you’re an organizer or not.”

Though most of the workers I spoke to were not actively involved in organizing, their general sentiments toward the union were positive. Workers expressed excitement at the prospect of longer breaks, shorter hours, better pay, and more reliable transportation.

Amazon workers’ labor is visible everywhere this city, from the trucks stopped on neighborhood streets, to the packages that appear on every other doorstep. The workers themselves are hardly ever seen, spending most of their time in a part of the city that rarely crosses the minds of tourists and locals alike. In the midst of the holiday season, customers appreciate the convenience of Amazon’s quick deliveries and endless catalogue of goods.

Rather than rushing around the city, waiting in lines, and lugging bags onto crowded trains, New Yorkers can do their holiday shopping in just a few clicks. Yet, the holiday stress does not cease to exist. It’s only transferred somewhere else, to someone else, several trains, buses, and ferries away. Far enough to be forgotten, but not so far that it affects the convenience of two-day delivery. The convenience and savings come at a high, yet largely invisible, price. As Martinez puts it, “people bleed to make sure your packages are delivered on time.”

The Israeli Air Force on Thursday extended its total war on its neighbors to Yemen for a fourth time. The Air Force has gained the technical capability of refueling fighter jets in midair, for which the Israelis and other U.S. allies in the region used to have to depend on the United States. This capability allows them now to fly down the Red Sea to Yemen and bomb it. The attack comes in response to repeated launching of missiles at Israel by the Houthi government of northern Yemen in sympathy with the people of Gaza.

The Israelis bombed the airport in the capital, Sanaa, the port of Hodeida, and oil refineries. Al-Mashhad al-Yemeni reports that according to local sources, the Israeli fighter jets primarily targeted Sanaa International Airport and al-Dailami Air Base, with eight raids having been carried out almost at once.

The Houthis have not been flying jets against Israel, so attacking the airport just harms the civilian Yemeni economy.

The Israelis destroyed the control tower at the airport and appear to have damaged the tarmac, putting it out of operation.

Since the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) was in Sanaa and was at the airport, the attack endangered his life.

Local sources said that Israeli fighter jets conducted three similar raids on Hodeida and oil facilities around the port.

The Israelis have a legitimate casus belli or legal basis for war, given that the Houthis have been firing missiles at Israel, endangering schoolchildren and other civilians. Likewise, the Houthis have disrupted Red Sea commerce by attacking random cargo ships, which further violates the laws of war.

However, the Houthis have not been flying jets against Israel, so attacking the airport just harms the civilian Yemeni economy. Likewise, the Hodeida port is the main conduit for food and other necessities to reach the north for civilian purposes. Attacking oil facilities means lack of gasoline for civilian families to drive into the market and get food. Yemen is a country with a profound health crisis after a decade of war, with millions suffering food insecurity and the danger of disease outbreaks rampant. It has the highest burden of cholera globally.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who was at the airport when it was struck, and whose close call exemplifies the Israeli practice of disregarding civilian life, described the scene:

Our mission to negotiate the release of U.N. staff detainees and to assess the health and humanitarian situation in Yemen concluded today. We continue to call for the detainees’ immediate release.

As we were about to board our flight from Sana’a, about two hours ago, the airport came under aerial bombardment. One of our plane’s crew members was injured. At least two people were reported killed at the airport. The air traffic control tower, the departure lounge—just a few meters from where we were—and the runway were damaged.

We will need to wait for the damage to the airport to be repaired before we can leave.

My U.N. and WHO colleagues and I are safe.

Our heartfelt condolences to the families whose loved ones lost their lives in the attack.

U.N. spokesperson Stéphanie Tremblay reported that Secretary-General Antonio Guterres “warns that airstrikes on Red Sea ports and Sana’a airport pose grave risks to humanitarian operations at a time when millions of people are in need of life-saving assistance.”

The Israeli doctrine of total war, in other words, in which civilian harm is completely disregarded, is now being applied to Yemen. The Israelis are not the first. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates heavily bombed Yemen from 2015-2022, inflicting substantial damage on civilian infrastructure and killing many civilians, in a failed attempt to dislodge the Houthis from power. On the whole, bombing guerrilla groups is ineffectual unless combined with a land campaign.

Even The New York Times has finally caught up to Israeli reporters at +972 Mag, who reported last spring that Israeli commanders were allowing up to 100 dead civilians for each senior militant killed, and up to 20 civilians dead for each lower-level fighter. These barbaric rules of engagement have led NATO to cease military cooperation with Israel, since their ROE violates the norms of the armies of civilized countries.

The Houthis grabbed power in 2014-2015, overthrowing the recognized Yemeni government. They are a militant movement that sprang from the Zaydi denomination of Shiite Islam. The Zaydis differ from the Shiites of Iran, Iraq, and Lebanon in not having ayatollahs and in having relatively good relations with Sunnis historically. Although Zaydis make up only 25% of the Yemeni population of 34 million, they comprise half of the population of northern Yemen where the Houthis rule. Some Sunni tribes have allied with the Houthis, so the latter they rule 70% to 80% of the population.

Of the already perilous condition of the civilian population, UNHCR writes,

The ongoing conflict and related breakdown of basic infrastructure and services, as well as limited availability of humanitarian assistance, has left many displaced individuals and households living in substandard conditions. Inadequate water and sanitation facilities contribute to frequent outbreaks of cholera, with resulting malnutrition. Compounding the severity of these needs, Yemen’s economy is in crisis, with over 80% of the population now living below the poverty line. Of the 96,907 IDP and host community households (588,835 individuals) assessed to date in 2024, almost 50% reported earning 25,000 Yemeni Rial (50 USD) or less per month, with 35% reporting no income at all. This forces some families to rely on harmful coping mechanisms, such as skipping meals, taking children out of school to work, begging, and exposing women and children to other forms of exploitation and abuse, including early marriage.

Yemen is enormous, bigger than California, but its south and east are thinly populated, and those are the areas the Houthis do not control—some 60% of the land area.

DOGE co-chief Vivek Ramaswamy says America generates fewer great engineers than other countries, so we have to import them from overseas using H1B visas. Not only is he opening a division on immigration within Trump World, he’s starting a conversation about American pop culture, which he claims elevates jocks over nerds. Should we bring in STEM workers from overseas even while many of our US citizens are unemployed? Is jock culture the main reason we are under-engineered? “The TMI Show” co-hosts Manila Chan and Ted Rall, the latter of whom spent three years as an Applied Physics and Nuclear Engineering major at Columbia University’s School of Engineering and Applied Science, have opinions.

The post TMI Show Ep 45: Vivek Says To Be Nicer to Engineers first appeared on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

The post TMI Show Ep 45: Vivek Says To Be Nicer to Engineers appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

President-elect Donald Trump said at a conference for young conservatives in Arizona this past Sunday that the official policy of his upcoming administration would be the recognition that there are only two genders, male and female, and pledged to stop “transgender lunacy” from day one of his presidency.

Transgender issues have become a hot topic in U.S. politics, with Democrats and Republicans adopting opposing policies on matters such as healthcare provision and the types of books allowed in public schools and libraries. Republicans have been pushing against LGBTQ rights for many years now, and Republican-led state legislatures have passed legislation restricting medical care to transgender youth. As such, there is little doubt that the incoming Trump administration will seek to make good on its promise to punish transgender people and the LGBTQ community in general.

There are an estimated 1.6 million transgender people in the United States, facing severe discrimination and constant denial of their fundamental rights and, in many cases, even rejection by their own families. Their only crime is that they do not conform to societal expectations of gender identity, meaning that they do not fit the confines of male and female binaries. Yet, transgender people have existed for as long as humans have been around. There is ample documentation of transgender people from ancient Mesopotamia to the Greek and Roman empires. Indeed, the ancient Greeks did not have the same concepts of gender and sexuality that eventually became crystalized in the modern Western world, from around the start of the 16th century. In Greek mythology, Hermaphroditus, the god of hermaphrodites and effeminates, was partly male, partly female.

Transphobia kicks in to enforce the division of labor by sex and gender as roles in the workforce in capitalist societies have mainly defined and formed our gender.

Records from U.S. hospitals and clinics of trans kids seeking medical care date back to the early 20th century. Therefore, arguments denying transgender realities are simply outrageous while policies restricting the rights of transgender people (such as receiving basic healthcare, education, and legal recognition) should be treated as nothing short of conscious attempts to cause direct harm to individuals identifying themselves as transgender and assessed as nothing less than criminal.

There are many reasons why people wish to deny transgender realities and why so many states want to limit transgender rights, ranging from cultural and religious reasons to psychological ones. Transphobia however is also a product of a particular type of society, one built around class divisions where maximization of profit and the reproduction of labor power are essential features. In class divided societies, gender stereotypes and thus sexual dimorphism go hand in hand with the desire to maintain the existing status quo and the specific form of labor relations built into such systems. Indeed, under capitalism, beliefs and assumptions about biological essentialism and gender binarism are convenient ways to keep reproducing a mode of production and a social order in which people need to be divided and boxed into neat categories. Transness disrupts capitalist social relations as masculinity and femininity are built into the economy as a binary relation. In this context, transphobia kicks in to enforce the division of labor by sex and gender as roles in the workforce in capitalist societies have mainly defined and formed our gender.

Under capitalism, transgender people are affected by the same structures that oppress the working class. Aside from the treatment of transgender people by the private healthcare industry, whereby discrimination is quite prevalent, some 50% of trans people also report employment discrimination while their level of unemployment is double the natural average. Transgender workers tend to have much lower income than the general population and are twice as likely to be living in poverty.

Transgender rights are therefore a working-class issue and “the fight for trans equality must be recognized as class struggle.” Of course, this is not to deny the fact that there are very rich queer people inside the system that do what capitalists basically do, which is to exploit other people. There is even a proportion of the capitalist class that supports transness and LGBTQ people, but we should bear in mind that the relationship between capitalism and oppression has always been dynamic and contradictory rather than mechanical and linear.

That said, working class politics must embrace trans rights as the fight for trans rights, women’s rights, and LGBTQ rights are not separate from the fight of the working class. A working-class program must address the needs and wants of trans people as most of them are indeed disproportionally poor and working-class. Unions, for instance, should follow the example of United Steelworkers who got rid of exclusions of gender-affirming healthcare. Unions should mobilize their members to fight back against anti-trans legislation at every level. And we must not forget that most of our citizens are not on the side of Trump and the Republicans when it comes to transgender people. Polling shows that two-thirds of U.S. citizens oppose transphobic bills, even though more than half of the states have introduced pieces of legislation seeking to curb the rights of transgender people.

Trumpism as a political strategy has always been about polarization, division, and bigotry. The fight against the upcoming administration requires class solidarity among all oppressed and marginalized group in U.S. society. The fight for transgender rights is a fight whose outcome will undoubtedly prove pivotal in the overall struggle to resist Trump’s extreme agenda (which includes mass deportations) in the next four years, starting January 20, 2025.

At the conservative conference in Phoenix, Arizona, Trump simple reiterated his plans to pass a federal ban on gender-affirming care for youth and to redefine gender at the federal level whereby the recognized genders are as assigned at birth. These policies would be an extension of what took place during the first four years of Trump in office, a relentless onslaught of attacks toward queer people. And Trump has already announced a host of extreme anti-trans appointees to key administration positions, which include former professional wrestling executive and anti-transgender advocate Linda McMahon as education secretary; Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who opposes gender-affirming care, as secretary of health and human services; and white supremacist and anti-LGBQ Stephen Miller as White House deputy chief of staff for policy.

The challenges that lie ahead for progressive communities across the United States for the next four years are many and severe. The fight for trans rights will be a long, arduous one, but winning it will be a huge victory for equality. There should be no mistake about that, which is why it must be recognized as class struggle.

In today’s world of widespread poverty and unprecedented wealth, how about raising the wages of the most poorly-paid workers?

This October, the World Bank reported that “8.5% of the global population―almost 700 million people―live today on less than $2.15 per day,” while “44% of the global population―around 3.5 billion people―live today on less than $6.85 per day.” Meanwhile, “global poverty reduction has slowed to a near standstill.”

In early 2024, the charity group Oxfam International noted that, since 2020, “148 top corporations made $1.8 trillion in profit, 52% up on 3-year average, and dished out huge payouts to rich shareholders.” During this same period, the world’s five wealthiest men “more than doubled their fortunes from $405 billion to $869 billion,” an increase of $14 million per hour. As corporate elites gathered in Davos for a chat about the world economy, 10 corporations alone were worth $10.2 trillion, more than the GDPs of all the countries in Africa and Latin America combined.

The world’s vast economic inequality “is no accident,” concluded a top Oxfam official. “The billionaire class is ensuring corporations deliver more wealth to them at the expense of everyone else.”

The growth of multinational corporations provided businesses with opportunities to slip past these national laws and dramatically reduce their labor costs by moving production of goods and services to low-wage nations.

Although inequalities in income and wealth have existed throughout much of human history, they have been softened somewhat by a variety of factors, including labor unions and―in modern times―minimum wage laws. Designed to provide workers with a basic standard of living, these laws create a floor below which wages are not allowed to sink. In 1894, New Zealand became the first nation to enact a minimum wage law, and―pressured by the labor movement and public opinion―other countries (including the United States in 1938) followed its lead. Today, more than 90% of the world’s nations have some kind of minimum wage law in effect.

These minimum wage laws have had very positive effects upon the lives of workers. Most notably, they lifted large numbers of wage earners out of poverty. In addition, they undermined the business practice of slashing wages (and thus reducing production costs) to increase profit margins or to cut prices and grab a larger share of the market.

Even so, the growth of multinational corporations provided businesses with opportunities to slip past these national laws and dramatically reduce their labor costs by moving production of goods and services to low-wage nations. This corporate offshoring of jobs and infrastructure gathered steam in the mid-20th century. Initially, multinational corporations focused on outsourcing low-skilled or unskilled manufacturing jobs, which had a negative impact on employment and wages in advanced industrial nations. In the 21st century, however, the outsourcing of skilled jobs, particularly in financial management and IT operations, rose dramatically. After all, from the standpoint of enhancing corporate profits, it made good sense to replace an American IT worker with an Indian IT worker at 13% of the cost. The result was an accelerating race to the bottom.

In the United States, this export of formerly good-paying jobs to low-wage, impoverished countries―combined with “free trade” agreements, a corporate and government assault on unions, and conservative obstruction of any raise in the pathetically low federal minimum wage ($7.25 per hour)―produced a disaster. The share of private sector goods-producing jobs at high wages shrank, since the 1960s, from 42 to 17%. Increasingly, U.S. jobs were located in the low-paid service sector. Not surprisingly, by 2023 an estimated 43 million Americans lived in poverty, while another 49 million lived just above the official poverty line. Little wonder that, in this nation and many others caught up in corporate globalization, there was an alarming rise of right-wing demagogues playing on economic grievances, popular hatreds, and fears.

If, therefore, wages in underdeveloped nations and in advanced industrial nations are not keeping pace with the vast accumulation of capital by the world’s wealthiest people and their corporations, one way to counter this situation is to move beyond the disintegrating patchwork of wage floor efforts by individual nations and develop a global minimum wage.

Such a wage could take a variety of forms. The most egalitarian involves a minimum wage level that would be the same in all nations. Unfortunately, though, given the vast variation among countries in wealth and current wages, this does not seem practical. In Luxembourg, for example, the average yearly per capita purchasing power is 316 times that of South Sudan. But other options are more viable, including basing the minimum wage on a percentage of the national median wage or on a more complex measurement accounting for the cost of living and national living standards.

Over the past decade and more, prominent economists and other specialists have made the case for a global minimum wage, as have a variety of organizations. For an appropriate entity to establish it, they have usually pointed to the International Labor Organization, a United Nations agency that has long worked to set international labor standards.

The advantages of a global minimum wage are clear.

It would lift billions of people out of poverty, thus enabling them to lead far better lives.

It would reduce the corporate incentive for offshoring by limiting the ability of multinational corporations to obtain cheap labor abroad.

By keeping jobs in the home country, it would aid unions in wealthy nations to retain their memberships and provide protection against “corporate blackmail”―the management demand that unions either accept contract concessions or get ready for the shift of corporate jobs and production overseas.

By raising wages in impoverished countries, it would reduce the poverty-driven mass migration from these nations and, thereby, deprive right-wing demagogues in wealthier countries of one of their most potent issues.

Of course, higher labor costs at home and abroad would reduce corporate profits and limit the growth of billionaires’ wealth and power. But wouldn’t these also be positive developments?

My new friend in Gaza tells me, "Humanity is everything. It is taste. It is God's mercy that's in you..." I am not a believer, but I accept whatever keeps her going for herself and her family.

Like many all over the world, I've been horrified by the war on Gaza and my country's unwavering support for Israel. Yes, I was horrified by the Hamas attack, but the relentless retaliation, now in it's 14th month, which has claimed the lives of over 45,000 innocent civilians, many of them women and children, turned the horror into rising anger. I've engaged in protests at the federal building, blocked roads, written and called my members of Congress regularly. I've participated in daily Jewish Voice for Peace Power Half-Hours for Gaza, and still the war rages on.

Early on, I began donating to various humanitarian aid agencies. But the aid doesn't always reach its intended recipients for a variety of reasons—non-stop bombing and hindering of aid by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), as well as criminal gangs stealing the aid, a common reality in war zones. What else could I do?

Fatima's intro on Facebook reads: "Oh, you damned war, you must stop. We are no longer able to continue. We are tired of staying alive."

Facebook was an open book about my sentiments. Soon families began reaching out to me. Families in Khan Younis, Jabalya, Gaza City. Then one woman stepped forward, and I felt compelled to share her story, and that of others. Her name is Fatima Qadeesh.

She tells me she fights to stay alive, this woman whose country my own has helped destroy with an estimated $22.76 billion from October 7, 2023 to September 30, 2024 alone. She fights for herself, her children, and her disabled father. Her deep brown eyes look out with defiance and dignity from a keffiyeh wrapped around her head in her profile. "I lost my husband in the genocide. And now I am fighting alone to provide food, drink, detergents, medicine, clothes, milk, and blankets," she says.

Direct and determined, Fatima is a new Facebook friend. No amount can give her back the father of her children or her beloved Gaza, but at least I can help with donations whenever I can, to make small amends for my country, which refuses to stop the weapons and the carnage, regardless of the toll on human life.

After one donation, Fatima starts to message me regularly: "How are you my dear friend? I hope you are in good health. I send my love to you and your dear family. I wish you a day full of love and happiness."

A few days later I message her: "Hello Fatima. Just sent you a little more money. May the war end soon. I am so sorry for my country's complicity. Please stay safe. It's 11:43 p.m. for you now. Hope there are no bombs and the night is sweet. All my good wishes."

She replies with a heart emoji, followed by, "God bless you my dear friend."

I reply with three butterfly emojis: "Some say butterflies represent transformation and freedom. May it be so!"

Fatima replies with another heart emoji and the words: "I hope so and I hope we meet one day and drink Arabic coffee. You are a great woman. I love you," followed by an emoji with two open hands, palms facing up.

I reply: "I like the idea of drinking Arabic coffee together. But I don't consider myself very great—only a woman with a conscience. Stay strong," to which she replies, "Oh my God, how great you are. I respect your decision."

Another few days pass and Fatima messages me again: "My dear friend, can I ask you a small question?"

I reply, "Of course."

"My request is that you help me spread my campaign to close friends to provide a bag of flour that I cannot provide due to the high prices of goods today," she writes. "It is worth $350, and I cannot provide it. I have received half of its due. If there is any disturbance, no need. This is my story on Facebook, take a look at it. I'm sorry if I bothered you with my message."

I tell her I'll post her GoFundMe page at the top of my Facebook posts. She shares a picture of her three young children, another of someone who may be her mother, and another of tents being ripped apart by the wind and rain. When her home was turned to rubble by relentless Israeli bombing, she was displaced. Tents on the beach became the only refuge. But with the arrival of the rainy season, keeping them intact and dry is a challenging and often impossible proposition. The Norwegian Refugee Council-led Shelter Cluster in Palestine says it will take humanitarian aid agencies more than two years to deliver materials to repair tents in southern Gaza alone. According to the agency, only 23% of Gaza's shelter needs were addressed this fall, leaving nearly 1 million Palestinians exposed to winter rains with no shelter at all.

Fatima's intro on Facebook reads: "Oh, you damned war, you must stop. We are no longer able to continue. We are tired of staying alive." While the first and third sentiments are no doubt true, the second seems fleeting because she always rebounds. "In the midst of this chaos, my family remains my anchor," she says in one of her posts, "And I am determined to protect them from any further harm."

More days pass. She messages me again: "May God make you happy. I don't know how to thank you. It was a heavy rain today. The tent is leaking. I moved to my neighbor because of the heavy rains. I can't afford nylon to fix the tent and protect my children. The situation is very difficult." She tells me she is running out of flour and asks if I can help. "I have sent to many people. You are my only refuge. You are in my heart and soul."

Fatima is in my heart and soul as well. I feel a deep connection. How can this be for someone I've known less than a month? Is it compassion, that innate ability to empathize? Is it shared humanity, the kind I've often exercised as someone who was raised, in part, as a Quaker? Is it outrage at the ongoing horror that I'm determined to make right? Or is it guilt because of my Jewish, but decidedly non-Zionist, heritage? Perhaps it's a blending of all of these things, but Fatima is my sister now and I won't abandon her.

Many of the 1.9 million displaced in Gaza are asking for help. GoFundMe has seen a surge of support for those in Gaza and Israel, since the Hamas attack, according to its web page. For my part, I feel honored to know Fatima and others who've reached out to me including Rasha, Samir, Ayat, Reham, Ahmed, Sama, and Mohamed.

Let me tell you a little about Mohamed. He, his 10-year-old daughter Judy, his siblings, and his parents have been displaced multiple times. For a while they tried living in a tent but in late fall returned to the rubble of their home, south of Khan Younis. The home is missing most of the roof and walls. A California-based organizer for his GoFundMe page says the donations have provided supplies to get through the winter and boosted the morale of him and his family.

On Christmas morning, Mohamed sends images of veggie starts he planted in the ground where his parents' room once stood. Mint, arugula, parsley, green locust, spinach, radish, and onion. It is the finest gift I can remember.

His first message to me is this: "Hello my dear friend. I'm sorry to bother you. Unfortunately, crises are accumulating. No house, no clothes, and now there is famine and high prices for food commodities, vegetables, and flour. Please help so we can buy food. Prices are very, very high, and this is what makes us constantly need help."

I send a donation, in spite of having a bad cold.

Like everyone I've been in touch with in Gaza, he is remarkably gracious—"I wish you recovery and safety." The next day he sends this message: "How did you become my dear sister? I hope you are well."

I tell him my head cold is persistent but it is nothing compared to what he is going through. We discuss the issue of humanitarian aid being blocked by the IDF, and he confirms that aid is also being stolen. We move on to the possibility of a cease-fire. "Yes, there are serious talks to end the war," he says. "I hope they will succeed and this nightmare will end soon."

He often wishes me good morning, and, since it is night for him, I wish him a good evening. "Goodness and happiness to you at all times, morning and evening," he says.

"The same to you and your family," I reply. "So many of us around the world want to see a free Palestine where there is peace and dignity, housing, bountiful food and water. Electricity! Schools! Playgrounds! Cultural centers and land to grow food. Is that too much to ask? I don't think it is."

He replies: "It will happen, my dear, no matter how late it is, but it will happen. I am optimistic, and what makes me so is your presence beside us and your sympathy with us."

The next day he wishes me good morning and sends an image of bare ground between bombed buildings. "Here was my father and mother's room. It has been cleaned of rubble, and I will plant it." Initially I think he means he will rebuild it. More clarity on this emerges days later.

I congratulate him on the task but receive no response, which is unusual when new Gaza friends and I are in messaging mode. I message again but still no response. "Please tell me you and Judy and your extended family are alright. Al Jazeera says Israeli forces are bombing Khan Younis today," I write. NPR posts an Associated Press report that at least 20 people, including five children, were killed by Israeli strikes across Gaza that day. In the southern city of Khan Younis, where Mohamed and his family live, a husband and wife were killed in a strike just after midnight.

There are no new messages from Mohamed that day. Finally in the morning he lets all of his Facebook friends know that someone tried to hack his Facebook page: "My dear friends, the Facebook account has been restored after it was locked due to a hacking attempt. Thank you very much to everyone who helped me."

I message him, "You have many brothers and sisters around the world. And while we may not be able to give you everything you need, like a cease-fire and a restored landscape, we are not going anywhere."

Mohamed replies, "You are the closest to my heart. You are my family and my loved ones. I wish I could meet you all and put a kiss on your forehead."

"Perhaps we will all meet you someday," I reply. "Until then we send you life and breath from far, far away."

On Christmas morning, Mohamed sends images of veggie starts he planted in the ground where his parents' room once stood. Mint, arugula, parsley, green locust, spinach, radish, and onion. It is the finest gift I can remember.

(Photo: Mohamed Samir Elnabris)

GoFundMe requests come in daily. I can't answer the need on my own. But if you can help even in a small way, please message me.

Weeks and months after she lost her presidential campaign, which ended with her millions of dollars in debt despite raising billions of dollars, vice president Kamala Harris continues to shake down Democrats for donations.

The post Final Attraction first appeared on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

The post Final Attraction appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

Once upon a time, in a precinct long, long ago, there was a campaign that built voter contact programs solely from those who lived in the targeted neighborhood. The entire community shopped at the same grocery stores and even saw one another at the bank, gym, and library. In other words, this was totally different from today's "ground game," manned by people who drive from hours away, armed with clipboards, shiny new campaign t-shirts, and ready to tell residents exactly how they should vote.

While a ton of articles have been written about the importance of the "ground game" in the final days of the Harris campaign, no one is discussing the increasing problems and decreasing rate of return of this tactic. Time Magazine's October election article, "Democrats Bank on Ground Game Advantage in Pennsylvania," opens with the author observing that "most of the people on Elana Hunter's list weren't answering the door," but does not dig into the actual problem. The same is true with campaign analysis in hundreds of other news outlets. The New York Times wrote a lengthy piece comparing Vice President Kamala Harris' in-house door-knocking operation to the Trump campaign's outsourced field operation. The article highlights both sides bragging about how many doors they knocked on and how much paid staff was hired. But, neither side (nor the writers) discuss how few people answer their doors or even care what the stranger is selling.

This analysis misses the real problems of modern-day door knocking: Voters don't open their doors anymore, voters do not know their neighbors, and undecided voters are more skeptical than ever when it comes to talking about politics.

As Democrats, we should know that a last-minute paid "ground game" that gets dropped into the battleground days before an election hasn't worked in years.

Year-round precinct work with "local captains" who knew their "turf" and how each neighbor would vote disappeared as the campaign industry grew and political parties stopped building traditional ward systems. Instead, they were replaced with volunteers and paid voices that only knocked on doors during major elections. This transition from a known, trusted neighbor to an unknown door knocker has made modern campaigning a data-driven competition that ignores effectiveness as it optimizes toward knocking on the most doors.

Nonetheless, message and messenger still matter in all aspects of campaigns, especially in the field. Door-to-door salesmen are a relic of history (Even the legendary Fuller Brush company started transitioning out of door-to-door sales in 1985).

Public safety studies show neighborhoods are more responsive to community policing programs when public safety officers know the people they serve. Why would political campaigns be different?

Technology has also had a major impact on door knocking. It's now been a decade since the invention of video door camera technology. According to a 2024 Consumer Reports study, 30% of Americans use video door cameras. These changes in neighborhood dynamics and consumer behaviors are realities that must be faced.

The rite-of-passage, where a volunteer gets lost in below-freezing weather canvassing an unknown precinct or gets bitten by a dog while knocking on doors, needs to be relegated to history. While campaign war stories are fun, it's time to be honest about the changing times and begin a new chapter: These age-old tactics are neither sacred nor effective. If no one is home or no one is answering their door even if they are home, political campaigns need to change with the times.

To win more elections, target voters with appropriate messages and messengers. It's time to explore better ways to use scarce time, people, and money to achieve the desired victory. Are there better places to send volunteers to work more efficiently and rally potential voters?

This is not to say that field organizing should be discarded or that campaigns should go completely digital. (Lots of criticism is being written on the current problems with these newer tactics that will hopefully be fixed.) But, as the Democratic Party's messaging and mobilization are transformed, an honest assessment of all tactics is needed to understand what works and create better ways to win.

Remember, just because a tactic worked on one campaign, it will not always continue to work the same four years later. We have tried this with auto-calling and text messaging technologies and know they have diminishing returns each cycle. Now is the time to dig deep and have honest conversations with field organizers and volunteers to learn what tactics need to be retired and start adopting new approaches.

Let's stop pretending that more "fake neighbors" door-knocking is the solution to the Democrats' problems and focus on how to best reach targeted voters with a message that resonates, delivered by respected voices that matter, while we have time now to build a real organic field effort.

As Democrats, we should know that a last-minute paid "ground game" that gets dropped into the battleground days before an election hasn't worked in years. It didn't work on Howard Dean's well-funded 2004 campaign that flew tons of staff and volunteers to Iowa. It's now 20 years after the infamous Dean scream, and we continue to blindly follow the same failed "orange cap" tactics of these past campaigns: inserting last-minute volunteers and door-knocking teams instead of thinking about how to create long-term community-based approaches.

We all have to grow up at some point and face the truth. Or you could keep believing in Santa Claus and see what gift he brings you in the next election cycle.